AI Models · Open-Source vs Paid

Mistral Medium 3.5 Open vs Claude Opus 5 Paid

Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Claude Opus 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.

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
Claude Opus 5PaidAnthropic
$5 /M input
$25 /M outputManaged API (no infra to run)
TypeProprietary
Context window1M tokens
MultimodalYes
Self-hostNo
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.

Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Claude Opus 5 specs

SpecMistral Medium 3.5Claude Opus 5Winner
MakerMistral AIAnthropic–
TypeOpen-weightProprietaryMistral Medium 3.5
Context window262K tokens1M tokensClaude Opus 5
Input price$1.5/M · free self-host$5/MMistral Medium 3.5
Output price$7.5/M · free self-host$25/MMistral Medium 3.5
Vision / multimodalYesYes= Tie
Tool / function callingYesYes= Tie
Self-hostableYesNo (API only)Mistral Medium 3.5
LicenseApache 2.0ProprietaryMistral 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 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
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

Feature comparison

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

Benchmarks: Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Claude Opus 5

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

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

Benchmark data by Artificial Analysis.

How Mistral Medium 3.5 and Claude Opus 5 score

🏆 Best value & openness: Mistral Medium 3.5 (4.6 vs 3.1 / 5)
CriterionMistral Medium 3.5Claude Opus 5
Cost-efficiency4.03.0
Context window4.05.0
Openness5.01.5
Self-hosting5.01.0
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

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...

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...

Other models in these families

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

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
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

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.

Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Claude Opus 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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