# Claude Sonnet 5 vs Ministral 8B

> Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.6 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 27× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-ministral-8b
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 14

## Summary

- They share 14 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher in 9 categories and Ministral 8B in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Claude Sonnet 5 leads 55.6 to 12.6.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 90.5% for Claude Sonnet 5 and 27.1% for Ministral 8B.
- Ministral 8B is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $10 for Claude Sonnet 5.
- Claude Sonnet 5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
- Ministral 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Sonnet 5 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 54.6 | 28.2 |
| Rank | 29 | 325 |
| Context | 1M | 262K |
| Input $/M | $2 | $0.15 |
| Output $/M | $10 | $0.15 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude Sonnet 5: 55.5 (#26)
- Ministral 8B: 35.0 (#230)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1483 | 1202 |
| 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

- Claude Sonnet 5: 42.8 (#18)
- Ministral 8B: 16.4 (#148)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 54.5% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 11.1% |
| GBAEval | 65.3% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1194 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 6,378 | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude Sonnet 5: 49.1 (#39)
- Ministral 8B: 18.4 (#281)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1461 | 1191 |
| DTBench | 92.5% | 45.7% |
| SimpleBench | 60.6% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 75.1% | — |
| CritPt | 16.9% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 35% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 35% | — |
| LMCA | 50% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 60% | — |
| Bench to the Future 3 | 0.14 | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 156.21 | — |
| ForecastBench | 61.1 | — |

## Math

- Claude Sonnet 5: 66.2 (#27)
- Ministral 8B: 25.7 (#267)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1467 | 1188 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 65.6% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 29.3% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 94.7% | — |
| ProofBench | 77% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 14.9% |

## Knowledge

- Claude Sonnet 5: 55.6 (#47)
- Ministral 8B: 12.6 (#297)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 90.5% | 27.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1490 | 1170 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 33.7% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 7.4% |

## Multimodal

- Claude Sonnet 5: 42.4 (#31)
- Ministral 8B: —

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1274 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 24.9% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1466 | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Sonnet 5: 53.8 (#55)
- Ministral 8B: 35.1 (#247)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1431 | 1165 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1477 | 1193 |
| LMArena Russian | 1451 | 1195 |
| LMArena French | 1460 | — |
| LMArena German | 1440 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1422 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1411 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1437 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Sonnet 5: 76.3 (#41)
- Ministral 8B: 60.5 (#250)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1452 | 1161 |

## Long Context

- Claude Sonnet 5: 44.8 (#55)
- Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#227)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1463 | 1212 |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Sonnet 5: 69.2 (#25)
- Ministral 8B: 39.6 (#246)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1442 | 1191 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1416 | 1175 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1454 | 1166 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1794 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1236 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than Ministral 8B?

Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.6 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 27× 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 Ministral 8B?

Ministral 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 5 lists at $2 and $10.

### Is Claude Sonnet 5 or Ministral 8B better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 55.5 versus 35.0 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 5 does, with 1M tokens against 262K.

### How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 5 and Ministral 8B share?

14 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 5 has 51 scored results on Noometry and Ministral 8B has 17.