Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Mistral Large 3
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Mistral Large 3 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 Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fall… scores 31.5 points higher (40.8 vs 9.3) but costs 13× as much to run the benchmark ($622 vs $46.4; premium vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fall… when you need intelligence above 9.3, and Mistral Large 3 when 9.3 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Mistral Large 3 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 40.8 | 9.3 | −77.2% Mistral Large 3 is 77.2% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $622.28 | $46.41 | −92.5% Mistral Large 3 is 92.5% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 5.98s | 7.23s | +20.9% Mistral Large 3 is 20.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.50 / $1.50 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Mistral Large 3 vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 77.2% less intelligence, 92.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 20.9% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- Mistral Large 3 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Medium) scores 29.90 for $31.2.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)Mistral Large 3Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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