Claude Opus 4.6 vs Mistral Small 3
How do these models stack up? Below is an expert side-by-side comparison of specifications, context window capacity, live pricing per million tokens, and standardized benchmark scores for Claude Opus 4.6 and Mistral Small 3.
Claude Opus 4.6
Opus 4.6 is Anthropic’s strongest model for coding and long-running professional tasks. It is built for agents that operate across entire workflows rather than single prompts, making it especially effective...
Mistral Small 3
Mistral Small 3 is a 24B-parameter language model optimized for low-latency performance across common AI tasks. Released under the Apache 2.0 license, it features both pre-trained and instruction-tuned versions designed...
Technical Specifications
| Specification | Claude Opus 4.6 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Mistral |
| Context Window | 1,000,000 tokens | 32,768 tokens |
| Agent Suitability | 95/100 | 84/100 |
| Time to First Token (TTFT) | 500 ms | 120 ms |
| Deployment Model | managed api | managed api |
| Production Stability | stable | stable |
| API Available | Yes | Yes |
| Released Date | 2026-02-04 | 2025-01-30 |
API Pricing Comparison
Input Price per Million Tokens
Claude Opus 4.6
$5.00
Mistral Small 3
$0.07
Output Price per Million Tokens
Claude Opus 4.6
$25.00
Mistral Small 3
$0.20
Want to test both models live?
Run side-by-side prompt prompts in our dynamic Sandbox. Check execution speeds, latency metrics, and compute actual costs in real-time.
Benchmark Performance Metrics
Scores show the raw performance percentages verified across key evaluation suites. Higher bars indicate superior accuracy and capability in that domain.
Claude Opus 4.6 Quirks & Gotchas
- ▸Best for long-context document analysis and legal review
- ▸Tool calling requires structured prompt — prone to verbose refusal without explicit output schema
Mistral Small 3 Quirks & Gotchas
- ▸Fastest TTFT at lowest cost — ideal for high-volume classification
- ▸Not designed for complex reasoning — route multi-step tasks to Mistral Large 3