Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Mistral Medium 3.5
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) 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 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 39.4 points higher (53.6 vs 14.2) but costs 1.7× as much to run the benchmark ($2172 vs $1264; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Mistral Medium 3.5.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 53.6 | 14.2 | −73.5% Mistral Medium 3.5 is 73.5% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,172.43 | $1,263.80 | −41.8% Mistral Medium 3.5 is 41.8% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 36.61s | 17.90s | −51.1% Mistral Medium 3.5 is 51.1% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $1.50 / $7.50 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 73.5% less intelligence, 41.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 51.1% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- 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 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)Mistral Medium 3.5Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
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