Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Mistral Small 3.1
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Mistral Small 3.1 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 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 46.5 points higher (53.6 vs 7.1) but costs 78× as much to run the benchmark ($2172 vs $27.8; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 7.1, and Mistral Small 3.1 when 7.1 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Mistral Small 3.1 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 53.6 | 7.1 | −86.8% Mistral Small 3.1 is 86.8% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,172.43 | $27.82 | −98.7% Mistral Small 3.1 is 98.7% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 33.81s | 11.99s | −64.5% Mistral Small 3.1 is 64.5% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.08 / $0.14 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Mistral Small 3.1 vs Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 86.8% less intelligence, 98.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 64.5% 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 Small 3.1 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.
Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)Mistral Small 3.1Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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