Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Mistral Small

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 23× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 26 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 Anthropic

50.3

Rank #50 Confirmed

Mistral Small Mistral AI

33.4

Rank #243 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 26 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.6 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 4.6 leads 52.9 to 16.4.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 85.8% for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 5.8% for Mistral Small.
  • Mistral Small is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.60 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
  • Claude Sonnet 4.6 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
  • Mistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 4.6Mistral Small
ProviderAnthropicMistral AI
Noometry Index50.333.4
Released2026-02-172024-02-26
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M262K
Max output128K256K
Input $ / M tokens$3$0.15
Output $ / M tokens$15$0.60
Results tracked5739

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.3 (#67), Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Mistral Small
SciCode46.8%26.5%
LMArena Coding15041362
ALE-Bench1,327497.62
SWE-bench Verified75.2%—
DeepSWE29.9%—
FrontierCode24.3%—
LMArena WebDev1522—
WeirdML66.1%—
BigCodeBench Instruct—36.1%
LiveBench Coding—36.2%
BigCodeBench Complete—46.6%

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#28), Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Mistral Small
Terminal-Bench53.4%—
APEX-Agents43%—
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—37.1%
OSWorld 2.09.3%—
DeepResearch Bench54.9%—
OSWorld72.1%—
ExploitBench23.6%—
GBAEval48.8%—
GDP.pdf18%—
LMArena Search1221—
Vending-Bench 27,204—

Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.1 (#45), Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Mistral Small
CritPt3.1%0%
LMArena Hard Prompts14841335
DTBench89.9%70.9%
LMCA46.5%20.6%
ARC-AGI-260.4%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark—37.8%
NYT Connections (extended)80.9%—
ARC-AGI-186.5%—
Chess Puzzles13%—
Thematic Generalization76.3%—
LiveBench Reasoning—44.8%
Mystery Game Puzzles16%—
LiveBench Data Analysis—53.7%
Epoch Capabilities Index152.24—
ForecastBench62—
LiveBench—44%

Math Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 52.9 (#49), Mistral Small: 16.4 (#293)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Mistral Small
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202585.8%5.8%
LMArena Math14621341
ProofBench45%—
LiveBench Math—39.9%
MATH Level 5—46.8%
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), Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Mistral Small
GPQA Diamond87.4%47.5%
Vectara Hallucination Rate10.6%5.1%
LMArena Expert15001291
SimpleQA Verified35.5%—
MMLU—68.7%

Multimodal Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#68), Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Mistral Small
LMArena Vision12831142
Blueprint-Bench 26.7%—
LMArena Document1482—

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.4 (#41), Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Mistral Small
LMArena Non-English14401315
LMArena Chinese14911340
LMArena French14651337
LMArena German14281340
LMArena Japanese14201275
LMArena Korean14111259
LMArena Russian14401324
LMArena Spanish14641346

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.4 (#25), Mistral Small: 66.4 (#209)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Mistral Small
LMArena Instruction Following14751310
LiveBench Instruction Following—63.7%

Long Context Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#44), Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Mistral Small
LMArena Longer Query14791327

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.2 (#22), Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Mistral Small
LMArena Text14581338
LMArena Creative Writing14351305
LMArena Multi-Turn14641344
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1810—
EQ-Bench 41207—
LiveBench Language—30.5%

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 better than Mistral Small?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 23× 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 Mistral Small?

Mistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.6 lists at $3 and $15.

Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Mistral Small better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.3 versus 34.0 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 Mistral Small share?

26 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small has 39.

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