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AI Choice Engine

Model comparison

Claude Haiku 4.5 vs Mistral Small 4

Anthropic against Mistral, compared on context, price, and verified benchmark results.

Catalog record checked September 26, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: High — see receipts below

Anthropic

Claude Haiku 4.5

Budget

vs

Mistral

Mistral Small 4

Budget · Open weights

AI model capability comparison
SpecificationClaude Haiku 4.5Mistral Small 4
ProviderAnthropicMistral
TierBudgetBudget
Context window200KWinner: 262K
Max output64KNot verifiedUnverified
Input / 1M tokens$1Winner: $0.15
Output / 1M tokens$5Winner: $0.60
WeightsClosedOpen
ParametersNot disclosedUnverified119B total / 6.5B active (MoE)
Reasoning levelsextended thinking (budget_tokens)Not verifiedUnverified
Modalitiestext, imagetext, image
LicenseNot disclosedUnverifiedApache 2.0
API model idclaude-haiku-4-5-20251001mistral-small-2603
ReleasedOctober 15, 2025March 16, 2026
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (2026-09-26)Winner: 16.911.3
SWE-bench Verified (2026-02-17)66.6Not verifiedUnverified
Terminal-Bench (2025-10-15)40.21Not verifiedUnverified

Prices are USD per million tokens at standard rates, excluding batch and caching discounts. Bold indicates the better figure where one is objectively better. Values we could not confirm from the provider are shown as “Not verified” rather than estimated.

Benchmark receipts

Where each score comes from, and how far it can be compared across models.

Pricing tiers

Claude Haiku 4.5: Standard $1/$5 per MTok; cache reads 10% of base input. 200K context (vs 1M on Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5).

Mistral Small 4: Mistral first-party API $0.15/$0.60 per MTok. Open weights (Apache 2.0). 119B total / 6.5B active MoE.

BudgetRecord checked September 26, 2026

Claude Haiku 4.5

Claude Haiku 4.5 is Anthropic's fastest, cheapest tier for high-volume classification and extraction.

Best for

  • High-volume classification
  • Routine extraction
  • Latency-sensitive stacks

Watch out

No adaptive thinking (manual extended thinking via budget_tokens only); 200K context. Anthropic lists 2026-10-15 as the earliest possible retirement date, and Haiku 5.5 is announced but not released.

BudgetOpen weightsRecord checked September 26, 2026

Mistral Small 4

Mistral Small 4 is Mistral's low-cost Apache-2.0 MoE — 6.5B active parameters with a 256K context and image input.

Best for

  • Cheap EU-hosted inference
  • Open-weight self-hosting
  • High-volume extraction

Watch out

Small active size: not for hard reasoning or agentic coding; max output is not published.

When the cheaper one wins

Mistral Small 4 is cheaper on output at $0.60 per million tokens against $5 for Claude Haiku 4.5 — about 8.3×. Use the cheaper tier for classification, extraction, summarisation, and any task where the expensive model’s extra score does not change the accepted output. The expensive one only pays if your hardest task actually fails on the cheap tier. These are standard-tier API rates, excluding batch and cache discounts.

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Evidence confidence: High

How strong and complete the evidence behind this comparison is — not a prediction of which model is better.

  • Pricing verified on both sides — Input and output rates are verified for both models.
  • 2/5 core specs verified on both sides — Not published for at least one side: max output, parameter count, reasoning levels.
  • 1 shared named benchmark with differing scores — Measured on: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index.
  • Verified within the last 90 days — Newest catalog check was 2 days ago.
  • Both models carry source citations — Each side has at least two catalog sources on record.

Source receipts

Each catalog figure was checked against the provider or an independent second source on the date shown.

Related comparisons

Diving deeper on one model? Claude Haiku 4.5 · Mistral Small 4

Common questions

Claude Haiku 4.5 vs Mistral Small 4

Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.

Is Claude Haiku 4.5 or Mistral Small 4 cheaper for input?
Mistral Small 4 is cheaper at $0.15 per million input tokens, against $1 for Claude Haiku 4.5 — roughly 6.7× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Claude Haiku 4.5 has tiered pricing: Standard $1/$5 per MTok; cache reads 10% of base input. 200K context (vs 1M on Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5). Mistral Small 4 has tiered pricing: Mistral first-party API $0.15/$0.60 per MTok. Open weights (Apache 2.0). 119B total / 6.5B active MoE.
Is Claude Haiku 4.5 or Mistral Small 4 cheaper for output?
Mistral Small 4 is cheaper at $0.60 per million output tokens, against $5 for Claude Haiku 4.5 — roughly 8.3× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Claude Haiku 4.5 has tiered pricing: Standard $1/$5 per MTok; cache reads 10% of base input. 200K context (vs 1M on Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5). Mistral Small 4 has tiered pricing: Mistral first-party API $0.15/$0.60 per MTok. Open weights (Apache 2.0). 119B total / 6.5B active MoE.
Which has the larger context window, Claude Haiku 4.5 or Mistral Small 4?
Mistral Small 4 accepts 262K tokens against 200K for Claude Haiku 4.5. This only matters if you routinely send very long documents or large codebases.
Should I use Claude Haiku 4.5 or Mistral Small 4?
Both sit in the budget tier, so the choice usually comes down to price and context rather than capability. Claude Haiku 4.5 suits high-volume classification; Mistral Small 4 suits cheap eu-hosted inference.
Can I self-host Claude Haiku 4.5 or Mistral Small 4?
Mistral Small 4 publishes open weights, but self-hosting and third-party provider access depend on the licence, hardware, serving support, and availability. Claude Haiku 4.5 is a closed model whose supported access paths are controlled by its provider.

Next step

Choosing between them

The verified figures that separate this pair, computed from the catalog rather than restated boilerplate.

  • Input price: Mistral Small 4 costs $0.15 per 1M tokens versus $1 for Claude Haiku 4.5 — a 6.7x difference at the headline tier.
  • Context: Mistral Small 4 takes 262K against 200K for Claude Haiku 4.5 — only decisive if your prompts approach the smaller window.
  • Deployment: Mistral Small 4 publishes weights you can self-host; the other is API-only.
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