Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) vs Mistral Medium 3.5

Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Mistral Medium 3.5 by Mistral? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 56.00
Total cost: $7260

MistralMistral Medium 3.5Off the frontier

Intelligence: 14.20
Total cost: $1264

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallbac… scores 41.8 points higher (56.0 vs 14.2) but costs 5.7× as much to run the benchmark ($7260 vs $1264; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallbac… when you need intelligence above 14.2, and Mistral Medium 3.5 when 14.2 is enough.

Metric	Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)	Mistral Medium 3.5	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	56.0	14.2	−74.6% Mistral Medium 3.5 is 74.6% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$7,259.50	$1,263.80	−82.6% Mistral Medium 3.5 is 82.6% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	380.92s	17.85s	−95.3% Mistral Medium 3.5 is 95.3% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$2.00 / $10.0	$1.50 / $7.50
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image

Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback): 74.6% less intelligence, 82.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 95.3% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback): what beats it Mistral Medium 3.5: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
Mistral Medium 3.5 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)Mistral Medium 3.5Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model

Matchup

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