ANTHROPIC VS MISTRAL
Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Magistral Medium
Magistral Medium is about 2.2x cheaper than Claude Sonnet 4.6 on a blended 3:1 input:output rate — the same 10K-in/2K-out request costs $0.03 vs $0.06. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the larger context window (1,000,000 vs 128,000 tokens).
Pricing verified
API pricing per 1M tokens
| Model | Input / 1M tokens | Output / 1M tokens | Blended (3:1 mix) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | $3.00 | $15.00 | $6.00 |
| Magistral Medium | $2.00 | $5.00 | $2.75 |
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 Sonnet 4.6 | $0.06 | $6,000 | +$3,000 |
| Magistral Medium | $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 Sonnet 4.6 | Magistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Mistral |
| Context window | 1,000,000 tokens | 128,000 tokens |
| Model class | General text | Reasoning |
| Tokenizer | Proprietary (counts estimated) | Proprietary (counts estimated) |
Count tokens for each model on its own page: Claude Sonnet 4.6 token counter and Magistral Medium token counter. All Anthropic models are on the Claude Token Counter. All Mistral models are on the Mistral Token Counter.
FAQ
Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Magistral Medium FAQ
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Magistral Medium?
Magistral Medium is cheaper. At rates checked 2026-08-11, Claude Sonnet 4.6 costs $3.00 input / $15.00 output per 1M tokens, while Magistral Medium costs $2.00 input / $5.00 output — about a 2.2x difference on a typical 3:1 input-heavy workload.
How much does a real request cost on Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Magistral Medium?
A request with 10,000 input tokens and 2,000 output tokens costs about $0.06 on Claude Sonnet 4.6 and $0.03 on Magistral Medium. At 100,000 such requests per month that is $6,000 vs $3,000 — a difference of $3,000 per month.
Which has the bigger context window, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Magistral Medium?
Claude Sonnet 4.6. It supports 1,000,000 tokens of context versus 128,000 tokens — roughly 750,000 English words in one request.
Do Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Magistral Medium count tokens the same way?
Not exactly. Claude Sonnet 4.6 uses a proprietary tokenizer (counts are estimates) and Magistral Medium uses a proprietary tokenizer (counts are estimates). The same prompt will tokenize differently, which shifts effective cost per word.