Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) vs Mistral Small 3.1
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) 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 (Medium) scores 21.0 points higher (28.1 vs 7.1) but costs 44× as much to run the benchmark ($1218 vs $27.8; premium vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) when you need intelligence above 7.1, and Mistral Small 3.1 when 7.1 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) | Mistral Small 3.1 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 28.1 | 7.1 | −74.7% Mistral Small 3.1 is 74.7% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,218.17 | $27.82 | −97.7% Mistral Small 3.1 is 97.7% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 9.01s | 11.78s | +30.7% Mistral Small 3.1 is 30.7% 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 (Medium): 74.7% less intelligence, 97.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 30.7% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- 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 (Medium)Mistral Small 3.1Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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