Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) vs Mistral Small 3.2
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Mistral Small 3.2 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 (Low, Default Fallback) scores 35.3 points higher (42.3 vs 7.0) but costs 7.1× as much to run the benchmark ($860 vs $122; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 7.0, and Mistral Small 3.2 when 7.0 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) | Mistral Small 3.2 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 42.3 | 7.0 | −83.5% Mistral Small 3.2 is 83.5% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $860.33 | $121.78 | −85.8% Mistral Small 3.2 is 85.8% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 11.16s | 10.52s | −5.7% Mistral Small 3.2 is 5.7% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.07 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Mistral Small 3.2 vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): 83.5% less intelligence, 85.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 5.7% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
- Mistral Small 3.2 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Flash scores 37.90 for $110.
Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)Mistral Small 3.2Today'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-5-5-low/mistral-small-3-2 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-low/mistral-small-3-2?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill