AI Models · Open-Source vs Paid

Claude Opus 5 Paid vs Mistral Medium 3.5 Open

Claude Opus 5 vs Mistral Medium 3.5 compared — price per token, context window, multimodality, openness and which to choose. Can the open-source model replace the paid one? Full 2026 breakdown.

Claude Opus 5 — full profile ›

Prices & specs refreshed from live data · olud.ai

Open-model prices = cheapest provider via OpenRouter; official maker rates may be higher.

Claude Opus 5PaidAnthropic
$5 /M input
$25 /M outputManaged API (no infra to run)
TypeProprietary
Context window1M tokens
MultimodalYes
Self-hostNo
Mistral Medium 3.5OpenMistral AI
$1.5 /M input
$7.5 /M outputNo per-token fees if you self-host
TypeOpen-weight
Context window262K tokens
MultimodalYes
Self-hostYes
Choose Mistral Medium 3.5 if you want to self-host, keep your data private and skip per-token fees — it's open-weight and runs on your own hardware. Choose Claude Opus 5 if you want frontier capability through a managed API with zero infrastructure to run.

Claude Opus 5 vs Mistral Medium 3.5 specs

SpecClaude Opus 5Mistral Medium 3.5Winner
MakerAnthropicMistral AI–
TypeProprietaryOpen-weightMistral Medium 3.5
Context window1M tokens262K tokensClaude Opus 5
Input price$5/M$1.5/M · free self-hostMistral Medium 3.5
Output price$25/M$7.5/M · free self-hostMistral Medium 3.5
Vision / multimodalYesYes= Tie
Tool / function callingYesYes= Tie
Self-hostableNo (API only)YesMistral Medium 3.5
LicenseProprietaryApache 2.0Mistral Medium 3.5

Price gap & when to choose each

3.3×cheaper per output token

Mistral Medium 3.5 is ~3.3× cheaper than Claude Opus 5 on output tokens ($7.5 vs $25 per M tokens).

Choose Claude Opus 5 if…
  • You want frontier performance through a managed API
  • You need the longer 1M context window
  • You value reliability & ecosystem
  • You don't want to manage infrastructure
Choose Mistral Medium 3.5 if…
  • You want to self-host or run on your cloud
  • You prioritize data privacy & control
  • You want the lowest operating costs
  • You are building open or reproducible AI

Feature comparison

CapabilityClaude Opus 5Mistral Medium 3.5
Open weights (downloadable)✗✓
Self-hostable✗✓
Runs fully offline✗✓
Vision / multimodal✓✓
Tool / function calling✓✓
1M+ context window✓✗

Benchmarks: Claude Opus 5 vs Mistral Medium 3.5

Independent benchmark scores measured by Artificial Analysis. Higher is better (except latency).

Claude Opus 5
Mistral Medium 3.5
Intelligence index
50.7
14.9
Coding index
78
46.9
GPQA
93.2%
74.8%
Humanity's Last Exam
54.9%
13.8%
Long Context Reasoning
79.3%
69.3%
SciCode
56.4%
40.2%
τ-Bench Banking
42.1%
15.1%
Terminal-Bench
89.1%
50.6%
IFBench
–
68.8%
τ²-Bench
–
94.2%
Terminal-Bench Hard
–
33.3%
Speed
61.4 tok/s
142.2 tok/s
Latency
36.03s
0.74s
Intelligence per $
5.1
5

Benchmark data by Artificial Analysis.

How Claude Opus 5 and Mistral Medium 3.5 score

🏆 Best value & openness: Mistral Medium 3.5 (4.6 vs 3.1 / 5)
CriterionClaude Opus 5Mistral Medium 3.5
Cost-efficiency3.04.0
Context window5.04.0
Openness1.55.0
Self-hosting1.05.0
Multimodality5.05.0

Scores come from live data — output price (cost), context length, open vs closed weights (openness & self-hosting) and vision/tool support (multimodality). Raw task quality isn't scored here; it depends on your benchmark — see the verdict.

What each model is

Claude Opus 5 Paid

Anthropic · Proprietary

Claude Opus 5 is Anthropic’s flagship model for demanding reasoning, coding, and long-horizon agentic work. It is particularly strong at end-to-end software tasks, code review and bug finding, visual analysis...

Mistral Medium 3.5 Open

Mistral AI · Open-weight

Mistral Medium 3.5 is a dense 128B instruction-following model from Mistral AI. It supports text and image inputs with text output, and is designed for agentic workflows, coding, and complex...

Other models in these families

These variants are tracked but not compared here — one page per family keeps the comparison readable.

Other variants tracked
Claude Opus 5 (batch)Claude Opus 4.8Claude Opus 4.8 (batch)Claude Opus 4.7Claude Opus 4.7 (batch)Claude Opus 4.6Claude Opus 4.6 (batch)Claude Opus 4.5Claude Opus 4.5 (batch)Claude Opus 4.1Claude Opus 4.1 (batch)Claude Opus 4
Other variants tracked
Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch)Mistral Small 4Mistral Small 4 (batch)Mistral Medium 3.1Mistral Medium 3.1 (batch)Mistral Large 3 2512Mistral Large 3 2512 (batch)Devstral 2 2512Mistral Medium 3Mistral Small 3.1 24BMistral Small 3.2 24BMistral LargeMistral Large 2407Mistral Small 3SabaMinistral 3 14B 2512Mixtral 8x22B InstructMinistral 3 8B 2512Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch)Ministral 3 3B 2512UncensoredCodestral 2508Codestral 2508 (batch)Voxtral Small 24B 2507Mistral Nemo

Frequently asked questions

Is Mistral Medium 3.5 as good as Claude Opus 5?

Mistral Medium 3.5 is open-weight and competitive on many tasks, but Claude Opus 5 may still lead on the hardest reasoning and agentic work. The gap keeps narrowing — benchmark both on your actual use case before deciding.

Can I run Mistral Medium 3.5 locally?

Yes. Mistral Medium 3.5 has open weights, so you can self-host it on your own GPUs or run it via a low-cost API. Claude Opus 5 is API-only and cannot be self-hosted.

How much cheaper is Mistral Medium 3.5?

Mistral Medium 3.5 costs $7.5/M output vs $25/M for Claude Opus 5 — roughly 3x cheaper via API, and free if you self-host.

Claude Opus 5 vs Mistral Medium 3.5 — which should I pick in 2026?

Choose Mistral Medium 3.5 if you want to self-host, keep your data private and skip per-token fees — it's open-weight and runs on your own hardware. Choose Claude Opus 5 if you want frontier capability through a managed API with zero infrastructure to run.

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