Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Mistral Small
Comparing Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Mistral Small across benchmarks, pricing, and capabilities.
Anthropic · Mistral AI · Updated for 2026
Which is better?
Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Mistral Small trade strengths across price, capabilities, and technical limits. The better choice depends on the workload.
On price, Mistral Small is roughly 13.3x 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
- 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 Mistral Small
- cost matters — it's about 13.3x cheaper per token
- you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune
At a glance
The differences that matter most.
Individual benchmarks
47 reported for Claude Sonnet 5.5 · 0 for Mistral Small
Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Mistral Smalldon'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 Sonnet 5.5 ($2.00/1M tokens) is 10.0x more expensive than Mistral Small ($0.20/1M tokens).
For output processing, Claude Sonnet 5.5 ($10.00/1M tokens) is 16.7x more expensive than Mistral Small ($0.60/1M tokens).
In conclusion, Claude Sonnet 5.5 is more expensive than Mistral Small.*
* Using a 3:1 ratio of input to output tokens
Context Window
Maximum input and output token capacity
Claude Sonnet 5.5 accepts 1,000,000 input tokens compared to Mistral Small's 32,768 tokens. Claude Sonnet 5.5 can generate longer responses up to 128,000 tokens, while Mistral Small is limited to 32,768 tokens.
Input capabilities
Documented input modalities across available providers
Claude Sonnet 5.5 supports multimodal inputs, whereas Mistral Small 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
Mistral Small
License
Usage and distribution terms
Claude Sonnet 5.5 is licensed under a proprietary license, while Mistral Small uses Mistral Research License.
License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.
Proprietary
Closed source
Mistral Research License
Open weights
Release Timeline
When each model was launched
Claude Sonnet 5.5 was released on 2026-09-28, while Mistral Small was released on 2024-09-17.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 is 25 months newer than Mistral Small.
Sep 28, 2026
3 days ago
2.0yr newerSep 17, 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 Mistral Small'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 Mistral Small's cutoff date.
Jun 2026
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Provider Availability
Claude Sonnet 5.5 is available from Anthropic. Mistral Small is available from Mistral AI.
Claude Sonnet 5.5
Mistral Small
Outputs Comparison
Judge for yourself.
Run your own prompts against Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Mistral Small side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.
FAQ
Common questions about Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Mistral Small.