Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 5 vs Ministral 8B

Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.6 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 27× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 14 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 5 Anthropic

54.6

Rank #29 Confirmed

Ministral 8B Mistral AI

28.2

Rank #325 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 14 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher in 9 categories and Ministral 8B in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where Claude Sonnet 5 leads 55.6 to 12.6.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 90.5% for Claude Sonnet 5 and 27.1% for Ministral 8B.
  • Ministral 8B is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $10 for Claude Sonnet 5.
  • Claude Sonnet 5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
  • Ministral 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 5Ministral 8B
ProviderAnthropicMistral AI
Noometry Index54.628.2
Released2026-06-292024-10-01
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M262K
Max output128K262K
Input $ / M tokens$2$0.15
Output $ / M tokens$10$0.15
Results tracked5117

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 55.5 (#26), Ministral 8B: 35.0 (#230)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Ministral 8B
LMArena Coding14831202
DeepSWE53.8%—
FrontierCode42.7%—
CursorBench34.1%—
LMArena WebDev1541—
SciCode54.3%—
GSO37.3%—
WeirdML68.8%—
ALE-Bench1,463—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 42.8 (#18), Ministral 8B: 16.4 (#148)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Ministral 8B
APEX-Agents54.5%—
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—11.1%
GBAEval65.3%—
LMArena Search1194—
Vending-Bench 26,378—

Reasoning Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 49.1 (#39), Ministral 8B: 18.4 (#281)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Ministral 8B
LMArena Hard Prompts14611191
DTBench92.5%45.7%
SimpleBench60.6%—
NYT Connections (extended)75.1%—
CritPt16.9%—
Chess Puzzles35%—
Mystery Game Puzzles35%—
LMCA50%—
Surface Evolver Bench60%—
Bench to the Future 30.14—
Epoch Capabilities Index156.21—
ForecastBench61.1—

Math Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 66.2 (#27), Ministral 8B: 25.7 (#267)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Ministral 8B
LMArena Math14671188
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)65.6%—
FrontierMath Tier 429.3%—
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202594.7%—
ProofBench77%—
MATH Level 5—14.9%

Knowledge Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 55.6 (#47), Ministral 8B: 12.6 (#297)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Ministral 8B
GPQA Diamond90.5%27.1%
LMArena Expert14901170
SimpleQA Verified33.7%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate—7.4%

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 5: 42.4 (#31), Ministral 8B: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Ministral 8B
LMArena Vision1274—
Blueprint-Bench 224.9%—
LMArena Document1466—

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 53.8 (#55), Ministral 8B: 35.1 (#247)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Ministral 8B
LMArena Non-English14311165
LMArena Chinese14771193
LMArena Russian14511195
LMArena French1460—
LMArena German1440—
LMArena Japanese1422—
LMArena Korean1411—
LMArena Spanish1437—

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 76.3 (#41), Ministral 8B: 60.5 (#250)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Ministral 8B
LMArena Instruction Following14521161

Long Context Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 44.8 (#55), Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#227)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Ministral 8B
LMArena Longer Query14631212

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 69.2 (#25), Ministral 8B: 39.6 (#246)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Ministral 8B
LMArena Text14421191
LMArena Creative Writing14161175
LMArena Multi-Turn14541166
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1794—
EQ-Bench 41236—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than Ministral 8B?

Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.6 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 27× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5 or Ministral 8B?

Ministral 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 5 lists at $2 and $10.

Is Claude Sonnet 5 or Ministral 8B better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 55.5 versus 35.0 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 5 does, with 1M tokens against 262K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 5 and Ministral 8B share?

14 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 5 has 51 scored results on Noometry and Ministral 8B has 17.

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