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Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Ministral 8B Instruct

Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads the LLM Stats Score 58.1 to -4.7. Ministral 8B Instruct is 40.0x cheaper per token.

Anthropic · Mistral AI · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads the overall LLM Stats Score 58.1 to -4.7, ranking #3 overall.

On price, Ministral 8B Instruct is roughly 40.0x cheaper per token on a blended 3:1 input/output basis, which adds up quickly at production volume.

Claude Sonnet 5.5 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 Sonnet 5.5

  • overall performance matters — it scores 58.1 and ranks #3 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 Sep 2026

Choose Ministral 8B Instruct

  • cost matters — it's about 40.0x cheaper per token
  • you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Claude Sonnet 5.5
Anthropic
Ministral 8B Instruct
Mistral AI
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
58.1
#3
-4.7
#359
Reasoning
56.6
#3
-4.8
#350
Coding
48.9
#2
-14.5
#274
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
$2.00 / M
$0.10 / M
Output price
$10.00 / M
$0.10 / M
Context window
1,000,000
128,000

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

1 shared
Index
Claude Sonnet 5.5
Ministral 8B Instruct
Math
36.9#34
-4.1#318
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

47 reported for Claude Sonnet 5.5 · 11 for Ministral 8B Instruct

No common benchmarks found

Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Ministral 8B 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

Ministral 8B Instruct costs less

For input processing, Claude Sonnet 5.5 ($2.00/1M tokens) is 20.0x more expensive than Ministral 8B Instruct ($0.10/1M tokens).

For output processing, Claude Sonnet 5.5 ($10.00/1M tokens) is 100.0x more expensive than Ministral 8B Instruct ($0.10/1M tokens).

In conclusion, Claude Sonnet 5.5 is more expensive than Ministral 8B Instruct.*

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

Lowest available price from all providers
Tue Sep 29 2026 • llm-stats.com
Anthropic
Claude Sonnet 5.5
Input tokens$2.00
Output tokens$10.00
Best providerAnthropic
Mistral AI
Ministral 8B Instruct
Input tokens$0.10
Output tokens$0.10
Best providerMistral
Notice missing or incorrect data?

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Claude Sonnet 5.5 accepts 1,000,000 input tokens compared to Ministral 8B Instruct's 128,000 tokens. Both models can generate responses up to 128,000 tokens.

Anthropic
Claude Sonnet 5.5
Input1,000,000 tokens
Output128,000 tokens
Mistral AI
Ministral 8B Instruct
Input128,000 tokens
Output128,000 tokens
Tue Sep 29 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Claude Sonnet 5.5 supports multimodal inputs, whereas Ministral 8B Instruct does not.

Claude Sonnet 5.5 can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Claude Sonnet 5.5

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Ministral 8B Instruct

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is licensed under a proprietary license, while Ministral 8B Instruct uses Mistral Research License.

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

Claude Sonnet 5.5

Proprietary

Closed source

Ministral 8B Instruct

Mistral Research License

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Claude Sonnet 5.5 was released on 2026-09-28, while Ministral 8B Instruct was released on 2024-10-16.

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is 24 months newer than Ministral 8B Instruct.

Claude Sonnet 5.5

Sep 28, 2026

1 days ago

2.0yr newer
Ministral 8B Instruct

Oct 16, 2024

2.0 years ago

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Claude Sonnet 5.5 has a documented knowledge cutoff of 2026-06-01, while Ministral 8B Instruct's cutoff date is not specified.

We can confirm Claude Sonnet 5.5's training data extends to 2026-06-01, but cannot make a direct comparison without Ministral 8B Instruct's cutoff date.

Claude Sonnet 5.5

Jun 2026

Ministral 8B Instruct

—

Provider Availability

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is available from Anthropic. Ministral 8B Instruct is available from Mistral AI.

Claude Sonnet 5.5

anthropic logo
Anthropic
Input Price:Input: $2.00/1MOutput Price:Output: $10.00/1M

Ministral 8B Instruct

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

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Ministral 8B Instruct side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Claude Sonnet 5.5
✓ Preferred
Ministral 8B Instruct
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Ministral 8B Instruct.

Which is better, Claude Sonnet 5.5 or Ministral 8B Instruct?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads the LLM Stats Score 58.1 to -4.7. Claude Sonnet 5.5 is made by Anthropic and Ministral 8B 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 Sonnet 5.5 compare to Ministral 8B Instruct in benchmarks?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 scores BenchCAD (with Python tool): 96.3%, ArXivMath (with tools): 95.2%, Global-MMLU: 92.1%, MILU: 91.6%, SWE-bench Multilingual: 90.3%. Ministral 8B Instruct scores MT-Bench: 83.0%, Winogrande: 75.3%, ARC-C: 71.9%, Arena Hard: 70.9%, MBPP pass@1: 70.0%.

Is Claude Sonnet 5.5 cheaper than Ministral 8B Instruct?

Ministral 8B Instruct is 20.0x cheaper for input tokens. Claude Sonnet 5.5 costs $2.00/M input and $10.00/M output via anthropic. Ministral 8B Instruct costs $0.10/M input and $0.10/M output via mistral.

What are the context window sizes for Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Ministral 8B Instruct?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 supports 1.0M tokens and Ministral 8B Instruct supports 128K tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Ministral 8B Instruct?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (58.1 vs -4.7), context window (1.0M vs 128K), input pricing ($2.00 vs $0.10/M), multimodal support (yes vs no), licensing (Proprietary vs Mistral Research License). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Ministral 8B Instruct?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is developed by Anthropic and Ministral 8B Instruct is developed by Mistral AI.

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