Model comparison
Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Magistral Small
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.1 to 29.9 on the Noometry Index. Magistral Small costs 8.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 9 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 9 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher in 4 categories and Magistral Small in 0 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads 46.1 to 6.9.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is ARC-AGI-1: 86.5% for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 5% for Magistral Small.
- Magistral Small is cheaper at $0.50 / $1.50 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 128K.
- Magistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Magistral Small | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 50.1 | 29.9 |
| Released | 2026-02-17 | 2025-06-10 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | 128K |
| Max output | 128K | 40K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $3 | $0.50 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $15 | $1.50 |
| Results tracked | 57 | 10 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.0 (#62), Magistral Small: 37.8 (#172)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Magistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 46.8% | 35.2% |
| SWE-bench Verified | 75.2% | — |
| DeepSWE | 29.9% | — |
| FrontierCode | 24.3% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1521 | — |
| WeirdML | 66.1% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1504 | — |
| ALE-Bench | 1,327 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#26), Magistral Small: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Magistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 53.4% | — |
| APEX-Agents | 43% | — |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 9.3% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 54.9% | — |
| OSWorld | 72.1% | — |
| ExploitBench | 23.6% | — |
| GBAEval | 48.8% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 18% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1221 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 7,204 | — |
Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.1 (#40), Magistral Small: 6.9 (#345)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Magistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 60.4% | 0% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 86.5% | 5% |
| CritPt | 3.1% | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | 13% | 3% |
| DTBench | 89.9% | 61.3% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 152.25 | 133.19 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 6.3% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 80.9% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | 76.3% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1485 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 16% | — |
| LMCA | 46.5% | — |
| ForecastBench | 62 | — |
Math Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.9 (#41), Magistral Small: 24.9 (#253)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Magistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 85.8% | 30% |
| ProofBench | 45% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1463 | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 32.4% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 8.3% | — |
Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.6 (#60), Magistral Small: 30.9 (#215)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Magistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 87.4% | 56.1% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 35.5% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.6% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1500 | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#61), Magistral Small: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Magistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1283 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 6.7% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1482 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.6 (#39), Magistral Small: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Magistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1440 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1491 | — |
| LMArena French | 1465 | — |
| LMArena German | 1428 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1419 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1411 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1440 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1465 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.6 (#23), Magistral Small: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Magistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1476 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#40), Magistral Small: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Magistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1479 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.4 (#22), Magistral Small: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Magistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1458 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1435 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1810 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1207 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1464 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 better than Magistral Small?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.1 to 29.9 on the Noometry Index. Magistral Small costs 8.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Magistral Small?
Magistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.50 per million input tokens and $1.50 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.6 lists at $3 and $15.
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Magistral Small better for coding?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.0 versus 37.8 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 does, with 1M tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Magistral Small share?
9 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57 scored results on Noometry and Magistral Small has 10.