Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) vs Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) by Anthropic or Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) by Mistral? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) scores 16.8 points higher (28.1 vs 11.3) but costs 29× as much to run the benchmark ($1218 vs $42.5; premium vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) when you need intelligence above 11.3, and Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) when 11.3 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) | Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 28.1 | 11.3 | −59.8% Mistral Small 4 (Reas… is 59.8% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,218.17 | $42.50 | −96.5% Mistral Small 4 (Reas… is 96.5% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 9.02s | 14.50s | +60.8% Mistral Small 4 (Reas… is 60.8% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.15 / $0.60 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium): 59.8% less intelligence, 96.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 60.8% 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 4 (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Medium) scores 29.90 for $31.2.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium)Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning)Today'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-medium/mistral-small-4 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-medium/mistral-small-4?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill