Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) vs Mistral Small 3.1
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) by Anthropic or Mistral Small 3.1 by Mistral? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) scores 17.2 points higher (24.3 vs 7.1) but costs 23× as much to run the benchmark ($653 vs $27.8; premium vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) when you need intelligence above 7.1, and Mistral Small 3.1 when 7.1 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) | Mistral Small 3.1 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 24.3 | 7.1 | −70.8% Mistral Small 3.1 is 70.8% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $652.70 | $27.82 | −95.7% Mistral Small 3.1 is 95.7% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.46s | 11.25s | +33.0% Mistral Small 3.1 is 33.0% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.08 / $0.14 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Mistral Small 3.1 vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Low): 70.8% less intelligence, 95.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 33.0% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- 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 5 (Low)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-5-low/mistral-small-3-1 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-low/mistral-small-3-1?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill