Model comparison
Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Mistral Small 3
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 104× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 21 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 21 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher in 8 categories and Mistral Small 3 in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads 70.2 to 32.2.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 85.8% for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 6.7% for Mistral Small 3.
- Mistral Small 3 is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 33K.
- Mistral Small 3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Mistral Small 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 50.3 | 31.2 |
| Released | 2026-02-17 | 2025-01-30 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | 33K |
| Max output | 128K | 16K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $3 | $0.05 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $15 | $0.08 |
| Results tracked | 57 | 24 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.3 (#67), Mistral Small 3: 36.5 (#207)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1504 | 1246 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 75.2% | — |
| DeepSWE | 29.9% | — |
| FrontierCode | 24.3% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1522 | — |
| SciCode | 46.8% | — |
| WeirdML | 66.1% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 45.3% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 50.4% |
| ALE-Bench | 1,327 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#28), Mistral Small 3: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| 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 (#45), Mistral Small 3: 18.9 (#273)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 13% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1484 | 1233 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 152.24 | 127.07 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 60.4% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 80.9% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 86.5% | — |
| CritPt | 3.1% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | 76.3% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 16% | — |
| DTBench | 89.9% | — |
| LMCA | 46.5% | — |
| ForecastBench | 62 | — |
Math Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 52.9 (#49), Mistral Small 3: 16.3 (#295)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 85.8% | 6.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1462 | 1240 |
| ProofBench | 45% | — |
| 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 3: 25.1 (#263)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 87.4% | 47.3% |
| LMArena Expert | 1500 | 1202 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 35.5% | — |
| Confabulations | — | 25.2% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.6% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#68), Mistral Small 3: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1283 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 6.7% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1482 | — |
Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.4 (#41), Mistral Small 3: 37.3 (#236)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1440 | 1198 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1491 | 1204 |
| LMArena French | 1465 | 1203 |
| LMArena German | 1428 | 1211 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1420 | 1111 |
| LMArena Korean | 1411 | 1188 |
| LMArena Russian | 1440 | 1216 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1464 | — |
Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.4 (#25), Mistral Small 3: 63.7 (#229)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1475 | 1214 |
Long Context Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#44), Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#211)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1479 | 1246 |
Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.2 (#22), Mistral Small 3: 32.2 (#280)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1458 | 1234 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1435 | 1195 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1810 | 707 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1464 | 1217 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1207 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 better than Mistral Small 3?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 104× 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 3?
Mistral Small 3 is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.6 lists at $3 and $15.
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Mistral Small 3 better for coding?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.3 versus 36.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 does, with 1M tokens against 33K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Mistral Small 3 share?
21 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3 has 24.