Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) vs Mistral Small 3.2
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) by Anthropic or Mistral Small 3.2 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 21.1 points higher (28.1 vs 7.0) but costs 10× as much to run the benchmark ($1218 vs $122; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) when you need intelligence above 7.0, and Mistral Small 3.2 when 7.0 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) | Mistral Small 3.2 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 28.1 | 7.0 | −75.1% Mistral Small 3.2 is 75.1% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,218.17 | $121.78 | −90.0% Mistral Small 3.2 is 90.0% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.58s | 12.54s | +46.2% Mistral Small 3.2 is 46.2% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.07 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Mistral Small 3.2 vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium): 75.1% less intelligence, 90.0% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 46.2% 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 3.2 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Flash scores 37.90 for $110.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium)Mistral Small 3.2Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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