Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) vs Mistral Medium 3.5
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) by Anthropic or Mistral Medium 3.5 by Mistral? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) scores 27.6 points higher (41.8 vs 14.2) but costs 5.4× as much to run the benchmark ($6874 vs $1264; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) when you need intelligence above 14.2, and Mistral Medium 3.5 when 14.2 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 41.8 | 14.2 | −66.0% Mistral Medium 3.5 is 66.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $6,873.86 | $1,263.80 | −81.6% Mistral Medium 3.5 is 81.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 37.99s | 17.85s | −53.0% Mistral Medium 3.5 is 53.0% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $1.50 / $7.50 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Claude Opus 4.8 (Max): 66.0% less intelligence, 81.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 53.0% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
- Mistral Medium 3.5 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude Opus 4.8 (Max)Mistral Medium 3.5Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-4-8/mistral-medium-3-5 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-4-8/mistral-medium-3-5?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill