Model comparison

Claude Opus 5 vs Mistral Large 3

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

Recorded profile verification October 2, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: Medium — see receipts below

Anthropic

Claude Opus 5

Frontier

Mistral

Mistral Large 3

Frontier · Open weights

AI model capability comparison
Specification	Claude Opus 5	Mistral Large 3
Provider
Provider	Anthropic	Mistral
Tier
Tier	Frontier	Frontier
Context window
Context window	Winner: 1M	262K
Max output
Max output	128K	Not verifiedUnverified
Input / 1M tokens
Input / 1M tokens	$5	Winner: $0.50
Output / 1M tokens
Output / 1M tokens	$25	Winner: $1.50
Weights
Weights	Closed	Open
Parameters
Parameters	Not verifiedUnverified	675B total / 41B active (sparse MoE)
Reasoning levels
Reasoning levels	low, medium, high, xhigh, max	Not verifiedUnverified
Modalities
Modalities	text, image	text, image
License
License	Not verifiedUnverified	Apache 2.0
API model id
API model id	claude-opus-5	mistral-large-2512
Released
Released	July 24, 2026	December 2, 2025
Humanity's Last Exam · source date Claude Opus 5: 2026-09-01
Humanity's Last Exam · source date Claude Opus 5: 2026-09-01	63.6	Not verifiedUnverified
Terminal-Bench 2.1 · source date Claude Opus 5: 2026-09-02
Terminal-Bench 2.1 · source date Claude Opus 5: 2026-09-02	89.1	Not verifiedUnverified
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index · source date Mistral Large 3: 2026-10-01
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index · source date Mistral Large 3: 2026-10-01	Not verifiedUnverified	9
GPQA Diamond · source date Mistral Large 3: 2026-09-26
GPQA Diamond · source date Mistral Large 3: 2026-09-26	Not verifiedUnverified	68

Dates beside benchmark scores refer to the linked source’s publication or capture date unless that source explicitly states when it measured the result. A shared URL alone does not establish comparable runs; unverified setups are marked. Prices are USD per million tokens at standard rates, excluding batch and caching discounts. 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.

Source date2026-10-01
Artificial Analysis (Mistral Large 3)
Composite index blending reasoning, knowledge, and coding evals into one 0–100 score.
Comparable with caveatOnly same-version scores are comparable. v4.3.2 was rebaselined (the top score fell from 66 on v4.1.1 to ~58), so v4.1.1 figures must not be compared with v4.3.2 figures — check the cited source and its date.
Source date2026-09-26
Artificial Analysis GPQA Diamond (independent; replaces Mistral's non-comparable base-model 5-shot 43.9)
Graduate-level science reasoning: multiple-choice questions written by domain PhDs.
Comparable with caveatDo not treat a fixed two-point band as universal measurement uncertainty; it depends on run count and evaluation setup. Chain-of-thought, prompt, and tool policy must match. The small pool limits fine-grained conclusions, and frontier scores can be near ceiling; Artificial Analysis dropped it from its Intelligence Index in v4.3.
Source date2026-09-02
Google Gemini 3.8 Flash evaluation table quoting public leaderboard / Artificial Analysis, Terminus 2; not a Google-run Opus evaluation (Cross-provider quotation; common effort and experiment date unverified)
Agentic terminal work: multi-step tasks executed in a sandboxed shell environment.
Comparable with caveatNot comparable with Terminal-Bench 3.0 or 4.0 (different task sets) or v1; harness configuration (container, time limits) also shifts results.
Source date2026-09-01
Anthropic Fable 5.1 comparison table (vendor, with tools; 56.6 no tools)
Frontier-knowledge ceiling: extremely hard multi-domain questions written to be near-impossible without deep expertise.
Comparable with caveatSubset/tool configurations (text-only vs with-tools) differ between vendors and materially change scores; must match configuration to compare.

Pricing tiers

Claude Opus 5: Standard $5/$25 per MTok with no long-context surcharge. Cache reads $0.50; 5-minute writes $6.25 and 1-hour writes $10. Batch $2.50/$12.50. First-party Fast research preview $10/$50, unavailable with Batch. US-only inference adds 10% where supported. Batch 300K output requires output-300k-2026-03-24; standard stays 128K. Knowledge cutoff May 2026; retirement not sooner than July 24, 2027.

Mistral Large 3: Mistral first-party API $0.50/$1.50 per MTok; cached input $0.05. The 675B-total / 41B-active multimodal checkpoint declares Apache 2.0. Regional hosting is endpoint-specific.

FrontierRecord checked October 1, 2026

Claude Opus 5

Claude Opus 5 is Anthropic's July 2026 agentic-coding model, now 'Active (legacy)'. Its successor Opus 5.5 has lower base input/output prices ($4/$20 vs $5/$25 per million tokens); performance depends on the workload and evaluation settings.

Best for

Complex agentic coding
Enterprise work
Long-context analysis

Watch out

Active legacy, superseded by Opus 5.5. Test migration: Opus 5.5 makes adaptive thinking always on, rejects forced tool use and the older computer-use tool, and changes thinking-block/progress behavior. Partner cloud lifecycles and prices can differ.

FrontierOpen weightsRecord checked October 2, 2026

Mistral Large 3

Mistral's December 2025 multimodal 675B/41B sparse MoE with a 256K context; Medium 3.5 is a separate dense model with configurable reasoning.

Best for

Open-weight deployments
Multimodal EU-hosted inference
Balanced frontier work

Watch out

The publisher describes Large 3 as not a dedicated reasoning model and documents vision limitations. It advertises FP8 deployment on a B200/H200 node or a separate NVFP4 checkpoint on H100/A100 nodes; this is not a guarantee for every serving setup. A separate hard output cap is not verified. Confirm regional residency on the actual endpoint.

When the cheaper one wins

Mistral Large 3 is cheaper on output at $1.50 per million tokens against $25 for Claude Opus 5 — about 17×. 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. This compares standard short-context token rates, not total cost per accepted task. Include input, cache, context tiers, schedules, retries and review in your pilot.

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Evidence confidence: Medium

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.
No directly aligned benchmark setup — No benchmark has matching cited sources, source dates, units, effort and recorded run details on both models.
Verified within the last 90 days — Older of the two catalog checks was 25 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.

Claude Opus 5: Claude model overview — whole-profile source check October 1 (accessed 2026-10-01)
Claude Opus 5: Claude current API pricing, caching and inference geography (accessed 2026-10-01)
Claude Opus 5: Anthropic — Claude Opus 5 (accessed 2026-08-29)
Claude Opus 5: Anthropic news — Claude Opus 5 (accessed 2026-08-29)
Claude Opus 5: Anthropic — Claude Opus 5.5 (Opus 5 successor) (accessed 2026-09-26)
Claude Opus 5: Anthropic selectable effort levels (separate from adaptive thinking mode) (accessed 2026-10-01)
Mistral Large 3: Current Mistral Large 3 API card (GA) (accessed 2026-10-01)
Mistral Large 3: Mistral pricing and exact cache rate (accessed 2026-10-01)
Mistral Large 3: Mistral Large 3 announcement (accessed 2026-10-01)
Mistral Large 3: Mistral changelog: identifier and release (accessed 2026-10-01)
Mistral Large 3: Large 3 official instruct checkpoint and Apache declaration (accessed 2026-10-01)

Related comparisons

Diving deeper on one model? Claude Opus 5 · Mistral Large 3

Common questions

Claude Opus 5 vs Mistral Large 3

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

Is Claude Opus 5 or Mistral Large 3 cheaper for input?

Mistral Large 3 is cheaper at $0.50 per million input tokens, against $5 for Claude Opus 5 — roughly 10× the price. Estimate both input and output token volume for your workload. These are base rates; Claude Opus 5: Standard $5/$25 per MTok with no long-context surcharge. Cache reads $0.50; 5-minute writes $6.25 and 1-hour writes $10. Batch $2.50/$12.50. First-party Fast research preview $10/$50, unavailable with Batch. US-only inference adds 10% where supported. Batch 300K output requires output-300k-2026-03-24; standard stays 128K. Knowledge cutoff May 2026; retirement not sooner than July 24, 2027. Mistral Large 3: Mistral first-party API $0.50/$1.50 per MTok; cached input $0.05. The 675B-total / 41B-active multimodal checkpoint declares Apache 2.0. Regional hosting is endpoint-specific.

Is Claude Opus 5 or Mistral Large 3 cheaper for output?

Mistral Large 3 is cheaper at $1.50 per million output tokens, against $25 for Claude Opus 5 — roughly 17× the price. Estimate both input and output token volume for your workload. These are base rates; Claude Opus 5: Standard $5/$25 per MTok with no long-context surcharge. Cache reads $0.50; 5-minute writes $6.25 and 1-hour writes $10. Batch $2.50/$12.50. First-party Fast research preview $10/$50, unavailable with Batch. US-only inference adds 10% where supported. Batch 300K output requires output-300k-2026-03-24; standard stays 128K. Knowledge cutoff May 2026; retirement not sooner than July 24, 2027. Mistral Large 3: Mistral first-party API $0.50/$1.50 per MTok; cached input $0.05. The 675B-total / 41B-active multimodal checkpoint declares Apache 2.0. Regional hosting is endpoint-specific.

Which has the larger context window, Claude Opus 5 or Mistral Large 3?

Claude Opus 5 accepts 1M tokens against 262K for Mistral Large 3. This only matters if you routinely send very long documents or large codebases.

Should I use Claude Opus 5 or Mistral Large 3?

Both are classified in our frontier tier; this editorial grouping does not imply equal capability. Claude Opus 5 is a candidate for complex agentic coding; Mistral Large 3 is a candidate for open-weight deployments. Compare accuracy, tool reliability, latency and cost on representative tasks.

Can I self-host Claude Opus 5 or Mistral Large 3?

Mistral Large 3 publishes open weights, but self-hosting and third-party provider access depend on the licence, hardware, serving support, and availability. Claude Opus 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 Large 3 costs $0.50 per 1M tokens versus $5 for Claude Opus 5 — a 10x difference at the headline tier.
Context: Claude Opus 5 takes 1M against 262K for Mistral Large 3 — only decisive if your prompts approach the smaller window.
Deployment: Mistral Large 3 publishes weights you can self-host; the other is API-only.

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