Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Opus 4.8 vs Mistral Small

Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 38× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.8's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 26 shared benchmarks.

Claude Opus 4.8 Anthropic

60.7

Rank #13 Confirmed

Mistral Small Mistral AI

33.4

Rank #243 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 26 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.8 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 Opus 4.8 leads 78.4 to 16.4.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 98.3% for Claude Opus 4.8 and 5.8% for Mistral Small.
  • Mistral Small is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.60 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.8.
  • Claude Opus 4.8 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
  • Mistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Opus 4.8Mistral Small
ProviderAnthropicMistral AI
Noometry Index60.733.4
Released2026-05-282024-02-26
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M262K
Max output128K256K
Input $ / M tokens$5$0.15
Output $ / M tokens$25$0.60
Results tracked6539

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Category by category

Coding Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 59.9 (#12), Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Mistral Small
SciCode53.5%26.5%
LMArena Coding14901362
ALE-Bench1,564497.62
DeepSWE59%—
FrontierCode46.5%—
LMArena WebDev1556—
GSO47.1%—
WeirdML82.9%—
BigCodeBench Instruct—36.1%
LiveBench Coding—36.2%
BigCodeBench Complete—46.6%

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 47.6 (#11), Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Mistral Small
APEX-Agents48.9%—
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—37.1%
OSWorld 2.020.6%—
Remote Labor Index8.3%—
τ²-bench Banking39.7%—
DeepResearch Bench50.2%—
PostTrainBench33.8%—
GBAEval70.9%—
GDP.pdf24%—
LMArena Search1204—
Vending-Bench 25,787—

Reasoning Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 64.7 (#16), Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Mistral Small
Kagi LLM Benchmark88.8%37.8%
CritPt20.9%0%
LMArena Hard Prompts14821335
DTBench94.9%70.9%
LMCA57.5%20.6%
ARC-AGI-272.1%—
SimpleBench64.8%—
NYT Connections (extended)91.1%—
ARC-AGI-192.5%—
Chess Puzzles34%—
EnigmaEval23.5%—
EBR-Bench28.6%—
LiveBench Reasoning—44.8%
Mystery Game Puzzles36%—
LiveBench Data Analysis—53.7%
Surface Evolver Bench87.5%—
Bench to the Future 30.14—
Epoch Capabilities Index158.21—
ForecastBench59.9—
LiveBench—44%

Math Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 78.4 (#13), Mistral Small: 16.4 (#293)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Mistral Small
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202598.3%5.8%
LMArena Math14871341
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)80%—
FrontierMath Tier 456.1%—
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions91.8%—
ProofBench69%—
LiveBench Math—39.9%
MATH Level 5—46.8%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)47.2%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)31.3%—

Knowledge Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 61.3 (#29), Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Mistral Small
GPQA Diamond91%47.5%
LMArena Expert15021291
SimpleQA Verified53%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate—5.1%
MMLU—68.7%

Multimodal Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 42.9 (#26), Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Mistral Small
LMArena Vision12941142
Blueprint-Bench 214.5%—
Furniture Assembly42.5%—
LMArena Document1475—

Multilingual Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 55.2 (#33), Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Mistral Small
LMArena Non-English14501315
LMArena Chinese15071340
LMArena French14811337
LMArena German14721340
LMArena Japanese14401275
LMArena Korean14321259
LMArena Russian14741324
LMArena Spanish14661346

Instruction Following Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 77.4 (#24), Mistral Small: 66.4 (#209)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Mistral Small
LMArena Instruction Following14761310
LiveBench Instruction Following—63.7%

Long Context Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 45.4 (#35), Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Mistral Small
LMArena Longer Query14831327

Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 72.0 (#16), Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Mistral Small
LMArena Text14611338
LMArena Creative Writing14541305
LMArena Multi-Turn14761344
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1840—
EQ-Bench 41281—
LiveBench Language—30.5%

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Opus 4.8 better than Mistral Small?

Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 38× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.8's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.8 or Mistral Small?

Mistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.8 lists at $5 and $25.

Is Claude Opus 4.8 or Mistral Small better for coding?

Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 59.9 versus 34.0 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Opus 4.8 does, with 1M tokens against 262K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.8 and Mistral Small share?

26 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.8 has 65 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small has 39.

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