Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Opus 5.5 vs Mistral Small 3

Claude Opus 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 68.5 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 139× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 14 shared benchmarks.

Claude Opus 5.5 Anthropic

68.5

Rank #3 Confirmed

Mistral Small 3 Mistral AI

30.9

Rank #268 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 14 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 5.5 scores higher in 8 categories and Mistral Small 3 in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where Claude Opus 5.5 leads 92.4 to 15.3.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 100% for Claude Opus 5.5 and 6.7% for Mistral Small 3.
  • Mistral Small 3 is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $4 / $20 for Claude Opus 5.5.
  • Claude Opus 5.5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 33K.
  • Mistral Small 3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Opus 5.5Mistral Small 3
ProviderAnthropicMistral AI
Noometry Index68.530.9
Released2026-09-222025-01-30
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M33K
Max output128K16K
Input $ / M tokens$4$0.05
Output $ / M tokens$20$0.08
Results tracked3524

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Category by category

Coding Claude Opus 5.5 leads

Claude Opus 5.5: 71.4 (#1), Mistral Small 3: 36.0 (#203)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5Mistral Small 3
LMArena Coding15451246
FrontierCode54.4%—
CursorBench57.8%—
LMArena WebDev1820—
FrontierSWE62.3%—
SciCode66.9%—
BigCodeBench Instruct—45.3%
MirrorCode77.4%—
BigCodeBench Complete—50.4%

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Claude Opus 5.5: 45.3 (#13), Mistral Small 3: —

BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5Mistral Small 3
APEX-Agents73.5%—
GDP.pdf30.6%—

Reasoning Claude Opus 5.5 leads

Claude Opus 5.5: 79.5 (#2), Mistral Small 3: 18.2 (#269)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5Mistral Small 3
LMArena Hard Prompts15451233
ARC-AGI-292.5%—
NYT Connections (extended)88.5%—
ARC-AGI-197.5%—
CritPt31.7%—
Chess Puzzles—0%
EBR-Bench71.4%—
Mystery Game Puzzles71%—
DTBench98.9%—
LMCA68.2%—
Epoch Capabilities Index—127.06

Math Claude Opus 5.5 leads

Claude Opus 5.5: 92.4 (#2), Mistral Small 3: 15.3 (#290)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5Mistral Small 3
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025100%6.7%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)91.2%—
FrontierMath Tier 495%—
ProofBench100%—
LMArena Math—1240

Knowledge Claude Opus 5.5 leads

Claude Opus 5.5: 66.6 (#9), Mistral Small 3: 25.0 (#258)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5Mistral Small 3
GPQA Diamond90.6%47.3%
LMArena Expert15641202
SimpleQA Verified72.2%—
Confabulations—25.2%

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Opus 5.5: 56.5 (#2), Mistral Small 3: —

BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5Mistral Small 3
Furniture Assembly83.3%—

Multilingual Claude Opus 5.5 leads

Claude Opus 5.5: 59.8 (#1), Mistral Small 3: 37.5 (#231)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5Mistral Small 3
LMArena Non-English15131198
LMArena Chinese15721204
LMArena Russian15321216
LMArena French—1202
LMArena German—1211
LMArena Japanese—1111
LMArena Korean—1188

Instruction Following Claude Opus 5.5 leads

Claude Opus 5.5: 80.1 (#2), Mistral Small 3: 63.9 (#224)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5Mistral Small 3
LMArena Instruction Following15351214

Long Context Claude Opus 5.5 leads

Claude Opus 5.5: 47.3 (#18), Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#206)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5Mistral Small 3
LMArena Longer Query15401246

Writing & Preference Claude Opus 5.5 leads

Claude Opus 5.5: 78.7 (#3), Mistral Small 3: 32.4 (#275)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5Mistral Small 3
LMArena Text15181234
LMArena Creative Writing15381195
EQ-Bench Creative Writing2050707
LMArena Multi-Turn15201217

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Opus 5.5 better than Mistral Small 3?

Claude Opus 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 68.5 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 139× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 5.5 or Mistral Small 3?

Mistral Small 3 is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 5.5 lists at $4 and $20.

Is Claude Opus 5.5 or Mistral Small 3 better for coding?

Claude Opus 5.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 71.4 versus 36.0 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Opus 5.5 does, with 1M tokens against 33K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 5.5 and Mistral Small 3 share?

14 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 5.5 has 35 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3 has 24.

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