Model comparison
Claude Opus 4.8 vs Mistral Medium 3
Compare Claude Opus 4.8 vs Mistral Medium 3 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
mistral · mistral/mistral-medium-2505
- Input
- $0.4
- Output
- $2
- Context
- 131.1K
Quick take
Mistral Medium 3 has the lower input price at $0.4 per 1M input tokens. Mistral Medium 3 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 gives more room for long generated answers, reports, or code output.
- Claude Opus 4.8 is stronger when the same large prompt or document is reused because it supports prompt caching.
Choose Mistral Medium 3 if...
- Mistral Medium 3 is the better default for cost-sensitive traffic and repeated high-volume calls.
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 | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1M input + 200K output | $10.00 | $0.80 | Mistral Medium 3 |
| 10M input + 2M output | $100.00 | $8.00 | Mistral Medium 3 |
| 100M input + 20M output | $1,000.00 | $80.00 | Mistral Medium 3 |
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 max output
- 8.2K
- Claude Opus 4.8 features
- prompt caching, function calling, vision
- Mistral Medium 3 features
- function calling
Risk notes for Claude Opus 4.8
- High output price: cap max tokens for verbose generation workloads.
Risk notes for Mistral Medium 3
- Smaller context window: long PDFs, codebases, or RAG prompts may need chunking.
- No prompt caching in this snapshot: repeated long-context calls may be more expensive.
Routing tags
frontierpremiumreasoningcodingagentslong-contextmultimodalcache-friendlyragbudgetopen-weightenterpriselocal-open