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Claude 3 Sonnet vs Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct

Claude 3 Sonnet and Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct are closely matched at 1.8 and 4.3 on the LLM Stats Score. Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct is 104.3x cheaper per token.

Anthropic · Mistral AI · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Claude 3 Sonnet and Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct are closely matched on the overall LLM Stats Score at 1.8 and 4.3.

In the 4 individual benchmarks reported for both models, Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct wins 4; this is a narrower head-to-head signal than the composite indexes.

On price, Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct is roughly 104.3x cheaper per token on a blended 3:1 input/output basis, which adds up quickly at production volume.

Claude 3 Sonnet also accepts a larger context window (200,000 input tokens), making it the stronger choice for long documents and large codebases.

Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.

Choose Claude 3 Sonnet

  • you process long inputs — it offers a 200,000 token context window

Choose Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct

  • you value its reported benchmark strengths — it wins 4 of 4 exact shared results
  • cost matters — it's about 104.3x cheaper per token
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Jan 2025
  • you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Claude 3 Sonnet
Anthropic
Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct
Mistral AI
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
1.8
#317
4.3
#301
Reasoning
1.7
#308
3.8
#296
Coding
-1.4
#245
4.7
#203
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
0 of 4
4 of 4
Input price
$3.00 / M
$0.05 / M
Output price
$15.00 / M
$0.08 / M
Context window
200,000
32,768

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

1 shared
Index
Claude 3 Sonnet
Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct
Math
7.4#263
6.9#266
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

11 reported for Claude 3 Sonnet · 8 for Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct

4 shared

Claude 3 Sonnet outperforms in 0 benchmarks, while Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct is better at 4 benchmarks (GPQA, HumanEval, MATH, MMLU-Pro).

Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

Thu Sep 10 2026 • llm-stats.com

Human preference

Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores

Pricing Analysis

Price comparison per million tokens

Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct costs less

For input processing, Claude 3 Sonnet ($3.00/1M tokens) is 60.0x more expensive than Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct ($0.05/1M tokens).

For output processing, Claude 3 Sonnet ($15.00/1M tokens) is 187.5x more expensive than Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct ($0.08/1M tokens).

In conclusion, Claude 3 Sonnet is more expensive than Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct.*

* Using a 3:1 ratio of input to output tokens

Lowest available price from all providers
Thu Sep 10 2026 • llm-stats.com
Anthropic
Claude 3 Sonnet
Input tokens$3.00
Output tokens$15.00
Best providerAnthropic
Mistral AI
Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct
Input tokens$0.05
Output tokens$0.08
Best providerDeepinfra
Notice missing or incorrect data?Start an Issue→

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Claude 3 Sonnet accepts 200,000 input tokens compared to Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct's 32,768 tokens. Claude 3 Sonnet can generate longer responses up to 200,000 tokens, while Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct is limited to 32,768 tokens.

Anthropic
Claude 3 Sonnet
Input200,000 tokens
Output200,000 tokens
Mistral AI
Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct
Input32,768 tokens
Output32,768 tokens
Thu Sep 10 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Claude 3 Sonnet supports multimodal inputs, whereas Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct does not.

Claude 3 Sonnet can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Claude 3 Sonnet

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Claude 3 Sonnet is licensed under a proprietary license, while Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct uses Apache 2.0.

License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.

Claude 3 Sonnet

Proprietary

Closed source

Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Claude 3 Sonnet was released on 2024-02-29, while Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct was released on 2025-01-30.

Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct is 11 months newer than Claude 3 Sonnet.

Claude 3 Sonnet

Feb 29, 2024

2.5 years ago

Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct

Jan 30, 2025

1.6 years ago

11mo newer

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct has a documented knowledge cutoff of 2023-10-01, while Claude 3 Sonnet's cutoff date is not specified.

We can confirm Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct's training data extends to 2023-10-01, but cannot make a direct comparison without Claude 3 Sonnet's cutoff date.

Claude 3 Sonnet

—

Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct

Oct 2023

Provider Availability

Claude 3 Sonnet is available from Anthropic, Bedrock, Google. Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct is available from DeepInfra, Mistral AI.

Claude 3 Sonnet

anthropic logo
Anthropic
Input Price:Input: $3.00/1MOutput Price:Output: $15.00/1M
bedrock logo
AWS Bedrock
Input Price:Input: $3.00/1MOutput Price:Output: $15.00/1M
google logo
Google
Input Price:Input: $3.00/1MOutput Price:Output: $15.00/1M

Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct

deepinfra logo
Deepinfra
Input Price:Input: $0.05/1MOutput Price:Output: $0.08/1M
mistral logo
Mistral
Input Price:Input: $0.10/1MOutput Price:Output: $0.30/1M
* Prices shown are per million tokens

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?Start an Issue discussion→

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Claude 3 Sonnet and Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Claude 3 Sonnet
✓ Preferred
Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Claude 3 Sonnet vs Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct.

Which is better, Claude 3 Sonnet or Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct?

Claude 3 Sonnet and Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct are closely matched on the LLM Stats Score at 1.8 and 4.3. Claude 3 Sonnet is made by Anthropic and Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct is made by Mistral AI. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their capability indexes, individual benchmarks, pricing, and limits above.

How does Claude 3 Sonnet compare to Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct in benchmarks?

Claude 3 Sonnet scores ARC-C: 93.2%, GSM8k: 92.3%, HellaSwag: 89.0%, MGSM: 83.5%, BIG-Bench Hard: 82.9%. Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct scores Arena Hard: 87.6%, HumanEval: 84.8%, MT-Bench: 83.5%, IFEval: 82.9%, MATH: 70.6%.

Is Claude 3 Sonnet cheaper than Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct?

Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct is 60.0x cheaper for input tokens. Claude 3 Sonnet costs $3.00/M input and $15.00/M output via anthropic. Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct costs $0.05/M input and $0.08/M output via deepinfra.

What are the context window sizes for Claude 3 Sonnet and Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct?

Claude 3 Sonnet supports 200K tokens and Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct supports 33K tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between Claude 3 Sonnet and Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (1.8 vs 4.3), context window (200K vs 33K), input pricing ($3.00 vs $0.05/M), multimodal support (yes vs no), licensing (Proprietary vs Apache 2.0). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Claude 3 Sonnet and Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct?

Claude 3 Sonnet is developed by Anthropic and Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct is developed by Mistral AI.

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