Model comparison
Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Mistral Medium 3.5
Compare Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Mistral Medium 3.5 API pricing: input/output token costs, cache pricing, context windows, workload estimates, and routing fit.
Claude Sonnet 4.6
anthropic · claude-sonnet-4-6
- Input
- $3
- Output
- $15
- 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 Sonnet 4.6 has the larger context window at 1M tokens.
Choose Claude Sonnet 4.6 if...
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 is safer for long documents, repository analysis, and RAG prompts because it has the larger context window.
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 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 Sonnet 4.6 | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1M input + 200K output | $6.00 | $3.00 | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
| 10M input + 2M output | $60.00 | $30.00 | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
| 100M input + 20M output | $600.00 | $300.00 | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
Context, output, and capability fit
Claude Sonnet 4.6 provides the larger context window. Check max output separately when the task needs long reports, code generation, or full-document rewrites.
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 max output
- 64K
- Mistral Medium 3.5 max output
- 262.1K
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 features
- prompt caching, function calling, vision
- Mistral Medium 3.5 features
- function calling, vision
Risk notes for Claude Sonnet 4.6
- No major capability risk is flagged in this snapshot, but provider pages should still be verified before production routing.
Risk notes for Mistral Medium 3.5
- No prompt caching in this snapshot: repeated long-context calls may be more expensive.
Routing tags
frontierreasoningcodingagentsenterprise-ragcache-friendlyragmultimodalopen-weightenterpriselocal-open