Model comparison
Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Ministral 8B
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 40× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 15 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 15 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.6 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 4.6 leads 51.7 to 12.6.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 87.4% for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 27.1% for Ministral 8B.
- Ministral 8B is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
- Ministral 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Ministral 8B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 50.3 | 28.2 |
| Released | 2026-02-17 | 2024-10-01 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | 262K |
| Max output | 128K | 262K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $3 | $0.15 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $15 | $0.15 |
| Results tracked | 57 | 17 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.3 (#67), Ministral 8B: 35.0 (#230)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1504 | 1202 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 75.2% | — |
| DeepSWE | 29.9% | — |
| FrontierCode | 24.3% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1522 | — |
| SciCode | 46.8% | — |
| WeirdML | 66.1% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 1,327 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#28), Ministral 8B: 16.4 (#148)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 53.4% | — |
| APEX-Agents | 43% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 11.1% |
| 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 (#45), Ministral 8B: 18.4 (#281)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1484 | 1191 |
| DTBench | 89.9% | 45.7% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 60.4% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 80.9% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 86.5% | — |
| CritPt | 3.1% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 13% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | 76.3% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 16% | — |
| LMCA | 46.5% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 152.24 | — |
| ForecastBench | 62 | — |
Math Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 52.9 (#49), Ministral 8B: 25.7 (#267)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1462 | 1188 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 85.8% | — |
| ProofBench | 45% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 14.9% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 32.4% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 8.3% | — |
Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.7 (#65), Ministral 8B: 12.6 (#297)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 87.4% | 27.1% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.6% | 7.4% |
| LMArena Expert | 1500 | 1170 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 35.5% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#68), Ministral 8B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1283 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 6.7% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1482 | — |
Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.4 (#41), Ministral 8B: 35.1 (#247)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1440 | 1165 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1491 | 1193 |
| LMArena Russian | 1440 | 1195 |
| LMArena French | 1465 | — |
| LMArena German | 1428 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1420 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1411 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1464 | — |
Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.4 (#25), Ministral 8B: 60.5 (#250)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1475 | 1161 |
Long Context Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#44), Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#227)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1479 | 1212 |
Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.2 (#22), Ministral 8B: 39.6 (#246)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1458 | 1191 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1435 | 1175 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1464 | 1166 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1810 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1207 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 better than Ministral 8B?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 40× 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 Ministral 8B?
Ministral 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.6 lists at $3 and $15.
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Ministral 8B better for coding?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.3 versus 35.0 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 does, with 1M tokens against 262K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Ministral 8B share?
15 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57 scored results on Noometry and Ministral 8B has 17.