Model comparison
Claude Sonnet 5 vs Mistral Small
Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.6 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 15× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 25 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 25 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher in 10 categories and Mistral Small in 0 categories; 10 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Claude Sonnet 5 leads 66.2 to 16.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 94.7% for Claude Sonnet 5 and 5.8% for Mistral Small.
- Mistral Small is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.60 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $10 for Claude Sonnet 5.
- Claude Sonnet 5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
- Mistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Sonnet 5 | Mistral Small | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 54.6 | 33.4 |
| Released | 2026-06-29 | 2024-02-26 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | 262K |
| Max output | 128K | 256K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $2 | $0.15 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $10 | $0.60 |
| Results tracked | 51 | 39 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 55.5 (#26), Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 54.3% | 26.5% |
| LMArena Coding | 1483 | 1362 |
| ALE-Bench | 1,463 | 497.62 |
| DeepSWE | 53.8% | — |
| FrontierCode | 42.7% | — |
| CursorBench | 34.1% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1541 | — |
| GSO | 37.3% | — |
| WeirdML | 68.8% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 36.1% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 36.2% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 46.6% |
Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 42.8 (#18), Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 54.5% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 37.1% |
| GBAEval | 65.3% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1194 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 6,378 | — |
Reasoning Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 49.1 (#39), Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 16.9% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1461 | 1335 |
| DTBench | 92.5% | 70.9% |
| LMCA | 50% | 20.6% |
| SimpleBench | 60.6% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 37.8% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 75.1% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 35% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 44.8% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 35% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 53.7% |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 60% | — |
| Bench to the Future 3 | 0.14 | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 156.21 | — |
| ForecastBench | 61.1 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 44% |
Math Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 66.2 (#27), Mistral Small: 16.4 (#293)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 94.7% | 5.8% |
| LMArena Math | 1467 | 1341 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 65.6% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 29.3% | — |
| ProofBench | 77% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 39.9% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 46.8% |
Knowledge Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 55.6 (#47), Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 90.5% | 47.5% |
| LMArena Expert | 1490 | 1291 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 33.7% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 5.1% |
| MMLU | — | 68.7% |
Multimodal Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 42.4 (#31), Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1274 | 1142 |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 24.9% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1466 | — |
Multilingual Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 53.8 (#55), Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1431 | 1315 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1477 | 1340 |
| LMArena French | 1460 | 1337 |
| LMArena German | 1440 | 1340 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1422 | 1275 |
| LMArena Korean | 1411 | 1259 |
| LMArena Russian | 1451 | 1324 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1437 | 1346 |
Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 76.3 (#41), Mistral Small: 66.4 (#209)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1452 | 1310 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 63.7% |
Long Context Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 44.8 (#55), Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1463 | 1327 |
Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 69.2 (#25), Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1442 | 1338 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1416 | 1305 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1454 | 1344 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1794 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1236 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 30.5% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than Mistral Small?
Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.6 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 15× 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 Mistral Small?
Mistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 5 lists at $2 and $10.
Is Claude Sonnet 5 or Mistral Small better for coding?
Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 55.5 versus 34.0 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 Mistral Small share?
25 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 5 has 51 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small has 39.