Claude Opus 5.5 vs Magistral Small 2506
Claude Opus 5.5 leads the LLM Stats Score 59.7 to 10.7.
Anthropic · Mistral AI · Updated for 2026
Which is better?
Claude Opus 5.5 leads the overall LLM Stats Score 59.7 to 10.7, ranking #1 overall.
Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.
Choose Claude Opus 5.5
- overall performance matters — it scores 59.7 and ranks #1 on LLM Stats
- your work emphasizes reasoning and coding — it leads those capability indexes
- you want the most recent training data — it shipped Sep 2026
Choose Magistral Small 2506
- you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune
At a glance
The differences that matter most.
Capability indexes
Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks
Individual benchmarks
31 reported for Claude Opus 5.5 · 4 for Magistral Small 2506
Claude Opus 5.5 and Magistral Small 2506don't have any common benchmark datasets to compare. They may have been evaluated on different testing suites.
Human preference
Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores
Context Window
Maximum input and output token capacity
Only Claude Opus 5.5 specifies input context (1,000,000 tokens). Only Claude Opus 5.5 specifies output context (128,000 tokens).
Input capabilities
Documented input modalities across available providers
Claude Opus 5.5 supports multimodal inputs, whereas Magistral Small 2506 does not.
Claude Opus 5.5 can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.
Claude Opus 5.5
Magistral Small 2506
License
Usage and distribution terms
Claude Opus 5.5 is licensed under a proprietary license, while Magistral Small 2506 uses Apache 2.0.
License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.
Proprietary
Closed source
Apache 2.0
Open weights
Release Timeline
When each model was launched
Claude Opus 5.5 was released on 2026-09-22, while Magistral Small 2506 was released on 2025-06-10.
Claude Opus 5.5 is 16 months newer than Magistral Small 2506.
Sep 22, 2026
0 days ago
1.3yr newerJun 10, 2025
1.3 years ago
Knowledge Cutoff
When training data ends
Claude Opus 5.5 has a knowledge cutoff of 2026-06-01, while Magistral Small 2506 has a cutoff of 2025-06-01.
Claude Opus 5.5 has more recent training data (up to 2026-06-01), making it potentially better informed about events through that date compared to Magistral Small 2506 (2025-06-01).
Jun 2026
1 yr newerJun 2025
Outputs Comparison
Judge for yourself.
Run your own prompts against Claude Opus 5.5 and Magistral Small 2506 side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.
FAQ
Common questions about Claude Opus 5.5 vs Magistral Small 2506.