Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Mistral Small 3.2

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 61.9 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3.2 costs 30× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 3 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 5.5 Anthropic

61.9

Rank #10 Confirmed

Mistral Small 3.2

Mistral AI

31.2

Rank #280 Confirmed

Summary

They share 3 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 5.5 scores higher in 4 categories and Mistral Small 3.2 in 0 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in math, where Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads 87.9 to 26.3.
The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 100% for Claude Sonnet 5.5 and 30.3% for Mistral Small 3.2.
Mistral Small 3.2 is cheaper at $0.0938 / $0.25 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $10 for Claude Sonnet 5.5.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 256K.
Mistral Small 3.2 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Mistral Small 3.2 specifications
	Claude Sonnet 5.5	Mistral Small 3.2
Provider	Anthropic	Mistral AI
Noometry Index	61.9	31.2
Released	2026-09-28	2025-06-20
Weights	Proprietary	Open
Context window	1M	256K
Max output	128K	16K
Input $ / M tokens	$2	$0.0938
Output $ / M tokens	$10	$0.25
Results tracked	32	6

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Category by category

Coding Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 5.5: 67.3 (#6), Mistral Small 3.2: —

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Claude Sonnet 5.5	Mistral Small 3.2
FrontierCode	52.1%	—
CursorBench	55.5%	—
LMArena WebDev	1774	—
FrontierSWE	61.9%	—
SciCode	61%	—
LMArena Coding	1513	—
ALE-Bench	1,819	—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 5.5: 45.0 (#16), Mistral Small 3.2: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Claude Sonnet 5.5	Mistral Small 3.2
APEX-Agents	75.5%	—

Reasoning Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5.5: 54.0 (#28), Mistral Small 3.2: 18.1 (#287)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Claude Sonnet 5.5	Mistral Small 3.2
Epoch Capabilities Index	165.03	131.74
Kagi LLM Benchmark	—	40.4%
NYT Connections (extended)	80.5%	—
CritPt	31.4%	—
Chess Puzzles	—	1%
LMArena Hard Prompts	1495	—
Mystery Game Puzzles	65%	—

Math Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5.5: 87.9 (#6), Mistral Small 3.2: 26.3 (#260)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Claude Sonnet 5.5	Mistral Small 3.2
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	100%	30.3%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)	88.8%	—
FrontierMath Tier 4	80.5%	—
ProofBench	100%	—
LMArena Math	1510	—
FrontierMath Erdős	2.9%	—

Knowledge Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5.5: 66.0 (#12), Mistral Small 3.2: 26.7 (#256)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Claude Sonnet 5.5	Mistral Small 3.2
GPQA Diamond	95.6%	49.1%
SimpleQA Verified	46.5%	—
LMArena Expert	1540	—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 5.5: 51.5 (#6), Mistral Small 3.2: —

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmark	Claude Sonnet 5.5	Mistral Small 3.2
LMArena Vision	1289	—
Furniture Assembly	75%	—

Multilingual Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 5.5: 55.3 (#30), Mistral Small 3.2: —

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Claude Sonnet 5.5	Mistral Small 3.2
LMArena Non-English	1452	—
LMArena Chinese	1522	—
LMArena Russian	1451	—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 5.5: 78.3 (#11), Mistral Small 3.2: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Claude Sonnet 5.5	Mistral Small 3.2
LMArena Instruction Following	1495	—

Long Context Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 5.5: 45.9 (#28), Mistral Small 3.2: —

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Claude Sonnet 5.5	Mistral Small 3.2
LMArena Longer Query	1498	—

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5.5: 66.0 (#40), Mistral Small 3.2: 45.0 (#224)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Claude Sonnet 5.5	Mistral Small 3.2
LMArena Text	1471	—
LMArena Creative Writing	1465	—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing	—	1255
LMArena Multi-Turn	1474	—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 5.5 better than Mistral Small 3.2?

Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5.5 or Mistral Small 3.2?

Mistral Small 3.2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.0938 per million input tokens and $0.25 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 5.5 lists at $2 and $10.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 does, with 1M tokens against 256K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Mistral Small 3.2 share?

3 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 5.5 has 32 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3.2 has 6.