Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) vs Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, 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 (Max, Default Fallback) scores 46.3 points higher (57.6 vs 11.3) but costs 205× as much to run the benchmark ($8708 vs $42.5; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 11.3, and Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) when 11.3 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) | Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 57.6 | 11.3 | −80.4% Mistral Small 4 (Reas… is 80.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $8,708.20 | $42.50 | −99.5% Mistral Small 4 (Reas… is 99.5% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 626.13s | 14.50s | −97.7% Mistral Small 4 (Reas… is 97.7% 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 (Max, Default Fallback): 80.4% less intelligence, 99.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 97.7% faster end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- 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/mistral-small-4 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5/mistral-small-4?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill