Model comparison
Claude Sonnet 5 vs Mistral Small 3.1
Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.6 to 31.7 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3.1 costs 10.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 23 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 23 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher in 9 categories and Mistral Small 3.1 in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Claude Sonnet 5 leads 66.2 to 14.7.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 94.7% for Claude Sonnet 5 and 3.9% for Mistral Small 3.1.
- Mistral Small 3.1 is cheaper at $0.35 / $0.56 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $10 for Claude Sonnet 5.
- Claude Sonnet 5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 128K.
- Mistral Small 3.1 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Sonnet 5 | Mistral Small 3.1 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 54.6 | 31.7 |
| Released | 2026-06-29 | 2025-03-17 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | 128K |
| Max output | 128K | 102K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $2 | $0.35 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $10 | $0.56 |
| Results tracked | 51 | 28 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 55.5 (#26), Mistral Small 3.1: 38.3 (#179)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1483 | 1309 |
| DeepSWE | 53.8% | — |
| FrontierCode | 42.7% | — |
| CursorBench | 34.1% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1541 | — |
| SciCode | 54.3% | — |
| GSO | 37.3% | — |
| WeirdML | 68.8% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 1,463 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 5: 42.8 (#18), Mistral Small 3.1: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 54.5% | — |
| GBAEval | 65.3% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1194 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 6,378 | — |
Reasoning Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 49.1 (#39), Mistral Small 3.1: 19.7 (#254)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 35% | 1% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1461 | 1278 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 156.21 | 127.48 |
| SimpleBench | 60.6% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 75.1% | — |
| CritPt | 16.9% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 35% | — |
| DTBench | 92.5% | — |
| LMCA | 50% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 60% | — |
| Bench to the Future 3 | 0.14 | — |
| ForecastBench | 61.1 | — |
Math Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 66.2 (#27), Mistral Small 3.1: 14.7 (#301)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 94.7% | 3.9% |
| LMArena Math | 1467 | 1262 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 65.6% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 29.3% | — |
| ProofBench | 77% | — |
| Omni-MATH | — | 24.8% |
Knowledge Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 55.6 (#47), Mistral Small 3.1: 22.6 (#271)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 90.5% | 41.9% |
| LMArena Expert | 1490 | 1257 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 33.7% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 61% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 39.2% |
Multimodal Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 42.4 (#31), Mistral Small 3.1: 33.2 (#99)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1274 | 1136 |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 24.9% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1466 | — |
Multilingual Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 53.8 (#55), Mistral Small 3.1: 41.2 (#209)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1431 | 1255 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1477 | 1253 |
| LMArena French | 1460 | 1273 |
| LMArena German | 1440 | 1266 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1422 | 1208 |
| LMArena Korean | 1411 | 1206 |
| LMArena Russian | 1451 | 1263 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1437 | 1283 |
Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 76.3 (#41), Mistral Small 3.1: 63.6 (#230)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1452 | 1264 |
| IFEval | — | 75% |
Long Context Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 44.8 (#55), Mistral Small 3.1: 39.5 (#178)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1463 | 1299 |
Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 69.2 (#25), Mistral Small 3.1: 37.0 (#259)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1442 | 1277 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1416 | 1253 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1794 | 761 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1454 | 1270 |
| WildBench | — | 78.8% |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1236 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than Mistral Small 3.1?
Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.6 to 31.7 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3.1 costs 10.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5 or Mistral Small 3.1?
Mistral Small 3.1 is cheaper. It lists at $0.35 per million input tokens and $0.56 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 5 lists at $2 and $10.
Is Claude Sonnet 5 or Mistral Small 3.1 better for coding?
Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 55.5 versus 38.3 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Claude Sonnet 5 does, with 1M tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 5 and Mistral Small 3.1 share?
23 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 5 has 51 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3.1 has 28.