Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) vs Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) by Anthropic or Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) by Mistral? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) scores 30.5 points higher (41.8 vs 11.3) but costs 162× as much to run the benchmark ($6874 vs $42.5; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) when you need intelligence above 11.3, and Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) when 11.3 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) | Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 41.8 | 11.3 | −73.0% Mistral Small 4 (Reas… is 73.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $6,873.86 | $42.50 | −99.4% Mistral Small 4 (Reas… is 99.4% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 36.92s | 14.50s | −60.7% Mistral Small 4 (Reas… is 60.7% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $0.15 / $0.60 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) vs Claude Opus 4.8 (Max): 73.0% less intelligence, 99.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 60.7% 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 Small 4 (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Medium) scores 29.90 for $31.2.
Claude Opus 4.8 (Max)Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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