Claude Opus 5 vs Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct
Claude Opus 5 leads the LLM Stats Score 54.6 to 4.2. Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct is 173.9x cheaper per token.
Anthropic · Mistral AI · Updated for 2026
Which is better?
Claude Opus 5 leads the overall LLM Stats Score 54.6 to 4.2, ranking #5 overall.
On price, Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct is roughly 173.9x cheaper per token on a blended 3:1 input/output basis, which adds up quickly at production volume.
Claude Opus 5 also accepts a larger context window (1,000,000 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 Opus 5
- overall performance matters — it scores 54.6 and ranks #5 on LLM Stats
- your work emphasizes reasoning and coding — it leads those capability indexes
- you process long inputs — it offers a 1,000,000 token context window
- you want the most recent training data — it shipped Jul 2026
Choose Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct
- cost matters — it's about 173.9x cheaper per token
- you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune
At a glance
The differences that matter most.
Individual benchmarks
13 reported for Claude Opus 5 · 8 for Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct
Claude Opus 5 and Mistral Small 3 24B Instructdon'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
Pricing Analysis
Price comparison per million tokens
For input processing, Claude Opus 5 ($5.00/1M tokens) is 100.0x more expensive than Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct ($0.05/1M tokens).
For output processing, Claude Opus 5 ($25.00/1M tokens) is 312.5x more expensive than Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct ($0.08/1M tokens).
In conclusion, Claude Opus 5 is more expensive than Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct.*
* Using a 3:1 ratio of input to output tokens
Context Window
Maximum input and output token capacity
Claude Opus 5 accepts 1,000,000 input tokens compared to Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct's 32,768 tokens. Claude Opus 5 can generate longer responses up to 128,000 tokens, while Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct is limited to 32,768 tokens.
Input capabilities
Documented input modalities across available providers
Claude Opus 5 supports multimodal inputs, whereas Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct does not.
Claude Opus 5 can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.
Claude Opus 5
Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct
License
Usage and distribution terms
Claude Opus 5 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.
Proprietary
Closed source
Apache 2.0
Open weights
Release Timeline
When each model was launched
Claude Opus 5 was released on 2026-07-24, while Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct was released on 2025-01-30.
Claude Opus 5 is 18 months newer than Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct.
Jul 24, 2026
1 months ago
1.5yr newerJan 30, 2025
1.6 years ago
Knowledge Cutoff
When training data ends
Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct has a documented knowledge cutoff of 2023-10-01, while Claude Opus 5'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 Opus 5's cutoff date.
—
Oct 2023
Provider Availability
Claude Opus 5 is available from Anthropic, DeepInfra. Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct is available from DeepInfra, Mistral AI.
Claude Opus 5
Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct
Outputs Comparison
Judge for yourself.
Run your own prompts against Claude Opus 5 and Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.
FAQ
Common questions about Claude Opus 5 vs Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct.