ANTHROPIC VS MISTRAL
Claude Opus 4.8 vs Mistral Medium 3.5
Mistral Medium 3.5 is about 3.3x cheaper than Claude Opus 4.8 on a blended 3:1 input:output rate — the same 10K-in/2K-out request costs $0.03 vs $0.10. Claude Opus 4.8 has the larger context window (1,000,000 vs 262,144 tokens).
Pricing verified
API pricing per 1M tokens
| Model | Input / 1M tokens | Output / 1M tokens | Blended (3:1 mix) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 4.8 | $5.00 | $25.00 | $10.00 |
| Mistral Medium 3.5 | $1.50 | $7.50 | $3.00 |
Rates from official Anthropic pricing and official Mistral pricing, checked 2026-08-11.
What a real workload costs
Example: one request with 10,000 input tokens and 2,000 output tokens, then that request at 100,000 runs per month.
| Model | Per request (10K in / 2K out) | Per month (100K requests) | Monthly delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 4.8 | $0.10 | $10,000 | +$7,000 |
| Mistral Medium 3.5 | $0.03 | $3,000 | — |
Model your own prompt sizes and volumes in the token cost analyzer, or check caching savings with the prompt caching calculator.
Specs side by side
| Spec | Claude Opus 4.8 | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Mistral |
| Context window | 1,000,000 tokens | 262,144 tokens |
| Model class | Reasoning | General text |
| Tokenizer | Proprietary (counts estimated) | Proprietary (counts estimated) |
Count tokens for each model on its own page: Claude Opus 4.8 token counter and Mistral Medium 3.5 token counter. All Anthropic models are on the Claude Token Counter. All Mistral models are on the Mistral Token Counter.
FAQ
Claude Opus 4.8 vs Mistral Medium 3.5 FAQ
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.8 or Mistral Medium 3.5?
Mistral Medium 3.5 is cheaper. At rates checked 2026-08-11, Claude Opus 4.8 costs $5.00 input / $25.00 output per 1M tokens, while Mistral Medium 3.5 costs $1.50 input / $7.50 output — about a 3.3x difference on a typical 3:1 input-heavy workload.
How much does a real request cost on Claude Opus 4.8 vs Mistral Medium 3.5?
A request with 10,000 input tokens and 2,000 output tokens costs about $0.10 on Claude Opus 4.8 and $0.03 on Mistral Medium 3.5. At 100,000 such requests per month that is $10,000 vs $3,000 — a difference of $7,000 per month.
Which has the bigger context window, Claude Opus 4.8 or Mistral Medium 3.5?
Claude Opus 4.8. It supports 1,000,000 tokens of context versus 262,144 tokens — roughly 750,000 English words in one request.
Do Claude Opus 4.8 and Mistral Medium 3.5 count tokens the same way?
Not exactly. Claude Opus 4.8 uses a proprietary tokenizer (counts are estimates) and Mistral Medium 3.5 uses a proprietary tokenizer (counts are estimates). The same prompt will tokenize differently, which shifts effective cost per word.