Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 4 vs Magistral Medium

Claude Sonnet 4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.8 to 35.2 on the Noometry Index. Magistral Medium costs 2.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 22 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 4 Anthropic

40.8

Rank #145 Confirmed

Magistral Medium Mistral AI

35.2

Rank #227 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 22 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4 scores higher in 7 categories and Magistral Medium in 1 category; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Sonnet 4 leads 22.9 to 8.6.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 73% for Claude Sonnet 4 and 16.2% for Magistral Medium.
  • Magistral Medium is cheaper at $2 / $5 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.
  • Magistral Medium accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 200K.
  • Magistral Medium has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 4 and Magistral Medium specifications
Claude Sonnet 4Magistral Medium
ProviderAnthropicMistral AI
Noometry Index40.835.2
Released2025-05-222025-03-17
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window200K262K
Max output64K16K
Input $ / M tokens$3$2
Output $ / M tokens$15$5
Results tracked5822

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 43.5 (#88), Magistral Medium: 39.1 (#161)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Magistral Medium
SciCode40%39.2%
LMArena Coding14141319
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)64.9%—
Aider Polyglot61.3%—
GSO4.9%—
WeirdML46.1%—
ALE-Bench655.35—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4: 38.5 (#31), Magistral Medium: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Magistral Medium
TheAgentCompany33.1%—
Cybench35%—
DeepResearch Bench46.6%—
OSWorld43.9%—
METR Time Horizons62%—

Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 22.9 (#187), Magistral Medium: 8.6 (#348)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Magistral Medium
ARC-AGI-25.9%0%
Kagi LLM Benchmark73%16.2%
ARC-AGI-140%6.1%
CritPt0.3%0.3%
LMArena Hard Prompts13721267
SimpleBench45.5%—
EnigmaEval3.1%—
DTBench77.1%—
LMCA29%—
Epoch Capabilities Index141.69—
ForecastBench60.2—

Math Claude Sonnet 4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 43.3 (#80), Magistral Medium: 35.1 (#189)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Magistral Medium
LMArena Math13751250
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202571.1%—
Omni-MATH60.2%—
MATH Level 584.4%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)4.1%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)0%—

Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 41.8 (#108), Magistral Medium: 33.5 (#202)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Magistral Medium
LMArena Expert13721223
GPQA Diamond79.2%—
Humanity's Last Exam7.8%—
MMLU-Pro84.3%—
Confabulations13.2%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate10.3%—
GPQA (HELM)70.6%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4: 26.2 (#121), Magistral Medium: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Magistral Medium
LMArena Vision1191—
GeoBench37%—
VPCT34%—
MindCube44.8%—

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 46.7 (#156), Magistral Medium: 39.6 (#224)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Magistral Medium
LMArena Non-English13331232
LMArena Chinese13501227
LMArena French13631267
LMArena German13311248
LMArena Japanese13021175
LMArena Korean12911125
LMArena Russian13551224
LMArena Spanish13571271

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 71.7 (#145), Magistral Medium: 66.0 (#211)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Magistral Medium
LMArena Instruction Following13761254
IFEval84%—

Long Context Magistral Medium leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 33.7 (#259), Magistral Medium: 39.3 (#183)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Magistral Medium
LMArena Longer Query13981295
Fiction.LiveBench46.9%—

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 57.1 (#132), Magistral Medium: 46.3 (#219)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Magistral Medium
LMArena Text13511255
LMArena Creative Writing13451245
LMArena Multi-Turn13761275
Short-Story Creative Writing81.4%—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1483—
WildBench83.8%—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 4 better than Magistral Medium?

Claude Sonnet 4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.8 to 35.2 on the Noometry Index. Magistral Medium costs 2.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4 or Magistral Medium?

Magistral Medium is cheaper. It lists at $2 per million input tokens and $5 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4 lists at $3 and $15.

Is Claude Sonnet 4 or Magistral Medium better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 4 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 43.5 versus 39.1 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Magistral Medium does, with 262K tokens against 200K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4 and Magistral Medium share?

22 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4 has 58 scored results on Noometry and Magistral Medium has 22.

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