Model comparison
Claude Opus 4.8 vs Mistral Medium 3.5
Compare Claude Opus 4.8 vs Mistral Medium 3.5 API pricing: input/output token costs, cache pricing, context windows, workload estimates, and routing fit.
Claude Opus 4.8
anthropic · claude-opus-4-8
- Input
- $5
- Output
- $25
- Context
- 1M
Mistral Medium 3.5
mistral · mistral/mistral-medium-3-5
- Input
- $1.5
- Output
- $7.5
- Context
- 262.1K
Quick take
Mistral Medium 3.5 has the lower input price at $1.5 per 1M input tokens. Mistral Medium 3.5 is cheaper for the example blended workload below. Claude Opus 4.8 has the larger context window at 1M tokens.
Choose Claude Opus 4.8 if...
- Claude Opus 4.8 is safer for long documents, repository analysis, and RAG prompts because it has the larger context window.
- Claude Opus 4.8 is stronger when the same large prompt or document is reused because it supports prompt caching.
Choose Mistral Medium 3.5 if...
- Mistral Medium 3.5 is the better default for cost-sensitive traffic and repeated high-volume calls.
- Mistral Medium 3.5 gives more room for long generated answers, reports, or code output.
Example workload cost
Estimates use input tokens plus 20% output tokens. They exclude provider discounts, cache hits, and tool/search surcharges.
| Workload | Claude Opus 4.8 | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1M input + 200K output | $10.00 | $3.00 | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
| 10M input + 2M output | $100.00 | $30.00 | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
| 100M input + 20M output | $1,000.00 | $300.00 | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
Context, output, and capability fit
Claude Opus 4.8 provides the larger context window. Check max output separately when the task needs long reports, code generation, or full-document rewrites.
- Claude Opus 4.8 max output
- 128K
- Mistral Medium 3.5 max output
- 262.1K
- Claude Opus 4.8 features
- prompt caching, function calling, vision
- Mistral Medium 3.5 features
- function calling, vision
Risk notes for Claude Opus 4.8
- High output price: cap max tokens for verbose generation workloads.
Risk notes for Mistral Medium 3.5
- No prompt caching in this snapshot: repeated long-context calls may be more expensive.
Routing tags
frontierpremiumreasoningcodingagentslong-contextmultimodalcache-friendlyragopen-weightenterpriselocal-open