Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, 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 2026-10-25.
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallba… scores 39.9 points higher (51.2 vs 11.3) but costs 38× as much to run the benchmark ($1627 vs $42.5; premium vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallba… when you need intelligence above 11.3, and Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) when 11.3 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 51.2 | 11.3 | −77.9% Mistral Small 4 (Reas… is 77.9% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,626.81 | $42.50 | −97.4% Mistral Small 4 (Reas… is 97.4% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 20.68s | 14.77s | −28.6% Mistral Small 4 (Reas… is 28.6% faster |
| 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 (Medium, Default Fallback): 77.9% less intelligence, 97.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 28.6% faster end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- 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-medium/mistral-small-4 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-medium/mistral-small-4?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill