Model comparison

Claude Opus 5 vs Mistral Small

Claude Opus 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 67.7 to 33.1 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 38× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 25 shared benchmarks.

Claude Opus 5 Anthropic

67.7

Rank #4 Confirmed

Mistral Small Mistral AI

33.1

Rank #238 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 25 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 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 Opus 5 leads 86.1 to 15.4.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 98.9% for Claude Opus 5 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 5.
  • Claude Opus 5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 256K.
  • Mistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Opus 5 and Mistral Small specifications
Claude Opus 5Mistral Small
ProviderAnthropicMistral AI
Noometry Index67.733.1
Released2026-07-242024-02-26
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M256K
Max output128K256K
Input $ / M tokens$5$0.15
Output $ / M tokens$25$0.60
Results tracked5739

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Category by category

Coding Claude Opus 5 leads

Claude Opus 5: 67.0 (#5), Mistral Small: 33.5 (#242)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 5Mistral Small
SciCode56.4%26.5%
LMArena Coding15331363
ALE-Bench2,165497.62
DeepSWE73.6%—
FrontierCode53.4%—
CursorBench46.6%—
LMArena WebDev1694—
FrontierSWE52%—
WeirdML91.8%—
BigCodeBench Instruct—36.1%
LiveBench Coding—36.2%
BigCodeBench Complete—46.6%

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Opus 5 leads

Claude Opus 5: 55.5 (#1), Mistral Small: 27.9 (#87)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 5Mistral Small
APEX-Agents65.8%—
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—37.1%
OSWorld 2.031.4%—
τ²-bench Banking48.7%—
PostTrainBench35%—
BALROG63.4%—
GBAEval79.6%—
GDP.pdf24%—
Vending-Bench 211,182—

Reasoning Claude Opus 5 leads

Claude Opus 5: 77.1 (#3), Mistral Small: 19.3 (#238)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 5Mistral Small
CritPt29.1%0%
LMArena Hard Prompts15251336
DTBench97.9%70.9%
LMCA64.5%20.6%
ARC-AGI-290.4%—
SimpleBench80.6%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark—37.8%
NYT Connections (extended)94.3%—
ARC-AGI-197.5%—
Chess Puzzles42%—
EBR-Bench45.7%—
LiveBench Reasoning—44.8%
Mystery Game Puzzles59%—
LiveBench Data Analysis—53.7%
Bench to the Future 30.12—
Epoch Capabilities Index162.67—
LiveBench—44%

Math Claude Opus 5 leads

Claude Opus 5: 86.1 (#6), Mistral Small: 15.4 (#287)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 5Mistral Small
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202598.9%5.8%
LMArena Math15331341
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)85.6%—
FrontierMath Tier 473.2%—
ProofBench99%—
LiveBench Math—39.9%
MATH Level 5—46.8%

Knowledge Claude Opus 5 leads

Claude Opus 5: 66.8 (#8), Mistral Small: 30.9 (#214)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 5Mistral Small
GPQA Diamond93.9%47.5%
LMArena Expert15581293
SimpleQA Verified59.9%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate—5.1%
MMLU—68.7%

Multimodal Claude Opus 5 leads

Claude Opus 5: 51.1 (#6), Mistral Small: 32.9 (#91)

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 5Mistral Small
LMArena Vision13211142
Blueprint-Bench 230.4%—
Furniture Assembly60.8%—
LMArena Document1516—

Multilingual Claude Opus 5 leads

Claude Opus 5: 58.8 (#3), Mistral Small: 45.7 (#164)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 5Mistral Small
LMArena Non-English15001315
LMArena Chinese15751342
LMArena French15221337
LMArena German15221341
LMArena Japanese15101275
LMArena Korean15261260
LMArena Russian15071324
LMArena Spanish15191346

Instruction Following Claude Opus 5 leads

Claude Opus 5: 79.3 (#5), Mistral Small: 66.6 (#204)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 5Mistral Small
LMArena Instruction Following15161310
LiveBench Instruction Following—63.7%

Long Context Claude Opus 5 leads

Claude Opus 5: 46.5 (#20), Mistral Small: 40.4 (#151)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 5Mistral Small
LMArena Longer Query15161327

Writing & Preference Claude Opus 5 leads

Claude Opus 5: 79.3 (#2), Mistral Small: 52.6 (#165)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 5Mistral Small
LMArena Text15061338
LMArena Creative Writing14911304
LMArena Multi-Turn14961344
EQ-Bench Creative Writing2133—
EQ-Bench 41385—
LiveBench Language—30.5%

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Opus 5 better than Mistral Small?

Claude Opus 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 67.7 to 33.1 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 38× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 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 Opus 5 lists at $5 and $25.

Is Claude Opus 5 or Mistral Small better for coding?

Claude Opus 5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 67.0 versus 33.5 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Opus 5 does, with 1M tokens against 256K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 5 and Mistral Small share?

25 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 5 has 57 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small has 39.

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