Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) vs Mistral Small 3.1
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) by Anthropic or Mistral Small 3.1 by Mistral? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) scores 23.0 points higher (30.1 vs 7.1) but costs 177× as much to run the benchmark ($4925 vs $27.8; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) when you need intelligence above 7.1, and Mistral Small 3.1 when 7.1 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) | Mistral Small 3.1 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 30.1 | 7.1 | −76.4% Mistral Small 3.1 is 76.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $4,924.80 | $27.82 | −99.4% Mistral Small 3.1 is 99.4% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 104.36s | 10.95s | −89.5% Mistral Small 3.1 is 89.5% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.08 / $0.14 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Mistral Small 3.1 vs Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max): 76.4% less intelligence, 99.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 89.5% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
- 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 Sonnet 4.6 (Max)Mistral Small 3.1Today'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-sonnet-4-6-adaptive/mistral-small-3-1 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-4-6-adaptive/mistral-small-3-1?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill