Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Mistral Small 3.2

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.1 to 30.8 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3.2 costs 45× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 5 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 Anthropic

50.1

Rank #42 Confirmed

Mistral Small 3.2 Mistral AI

30.8

Rank #271 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 5 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher in 4 categories and Mistral Small 3.2 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 17.5.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 85.8% for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 30.3% for Mistral Small 3.2.
  • Mistral Small 3.2 is cheaper at $0.0938 / $0.25 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
  • Claude Sonnet 4.6 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 256K.
  • Mistral Small 3.2 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 4.6Mistral Small 3.2
ProviderAnthropicMistral AI
Noometry Index50.130.8
Released2026-02-172025-06-20
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M256K
Max output128K16K
Input $ / M tokens$3$0.0938
Output $ / M tokens$15$0.25
Results tracked576

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Category by category

Coding Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.0 (#62), Mistral Small 3.2: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Mistral Small 3.2
SWE-bench Verified75.2%—
DeepSWE29.9%—
FrontierCode24.3%—
LMArena WebDev1521—
SciCode46.8%—
WeirdML66.1%—
LMArena Coding1504—
ALE-Bench1,327—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#26), Mistral Small 3.2: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Mistral Small 3.2
Terminal-Bench53.4%—
APEX-Agents43%—
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 (#40), Mistral Small 3.2: 17.5 (#282)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Mistral Small 3.2
Chess Puzzles13%1%
Epoch Capabilities Index152.25131.73
ARC-AGI-260.4%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark—40.4%
NYT Connections (extended)80.9%—
ARC-AGI-186.5%—
CritPt3.1%—
Thematic Generalization76.3%—
LMArena Hard Prompts1485—
Mystery Game Puzzles16%—
DTBench89.9%—
LMCA46.5%—
ForecastBench62—

Math Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.9 (#41), Mistral Small 3.2: 24.9 (#251)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Mistral Small 3.2
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202585.8%30.3%
ProofBench45%—
LMArena Math1463—
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), Mistral Small 3.2: 26.8 (#249)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Mistral Small 3.2
GPQA Diamond87.4%49.1%
SimpleQA Verified35.5%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate10.6%—
LMArena Expert1500—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#61), Mistral Small 3.2: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Mistral Small 3.2
LMArena Vision1283—
Blueprint-Bench 26.7%—
LMArena Document1482—

Multilingual Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.6 (#39), Mistral Small 3.2: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Mistral Small 3.2
LMArena Non-English1440—
LMArena Chinese1491—
LMArena French1465—
LMArena German1428—
LMArena Japanese1419—
LMArena Korean1411—
LMArena Russian1440—
LMArena Spanish1465—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.6 (#23), Mistral Small 3.2: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Mistral Small 3.2
LMArena Instruction Following1476—

Long Context Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#40), Mistral Small 3.2: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Mistral Small 3.2
LMArena Longer Query1479—

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.4 (#22), Mistral Small 3.2: 45.1 (#219)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Mistral Small 3.2
EQ-Bench Creative Writing18101255
LMArena Text1458—
LMArena Creative Writing1435—
EQ-Bench 41207—
LMArena Multi-Turn1464—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 better than Mistral Small 3.2?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.1 to 30.8 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3.2 costs 45× 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 3.2?

Mistral Small 3.2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.0938 per million input tokens and $0.25 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.6 lists at $3 and $15.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 does, with 1M tokens against 256K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Mistral Small 3.2 share?

5 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3.2 has 6.

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