Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) vs Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) 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.
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) scores 31.0 points higher (42.3 vs 11.3) but costs 20× as much to run the benchmark ($860 vs $42.5; premium vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 11.3, and Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) when 11.3 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) | Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 42.3 | 11.3 | −73.3% Mistral Small 4 (Reas… is 73.3% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $860.33 | $42.50 | −95.1% Mistral Small 4 (Reas… is 95.1% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 13.42s | 14.50s | +8.0% Mistral Small 4 (Reas… is 8.0% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.15 / $0.60 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): 73.3% less intelligence, 95.1% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 8.0% slower end-to-end.
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 4 (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Medium) scores 29.90 for $31.2.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-low/mistral-small-4 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-low/mistral-small-4?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill