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Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Mistral Small 3

Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Mistral Mistral Small 3 — side-by-side specs.

Anthropic
Claude Sonnet 4.6
Mistral
Mistral Small 3
Overview
CompanyAnthropicMistral
Release dateFeb 17 2026Jan 2025
Model type
Open sourceNoYes
Specifications
Parameters
Context window
Benchmarks
Coding
SWE-Bench Verified
79.6%
Multi-step tool use
MCP Atlas
69.5%
Multidisciplinary reasoning
Humanity's Last Exam · no tools
33.2%
Abstract reasoning
ARC-AGI-2
58.3%
Science
GPQA Diamond
89.9%
Agentic computer use
OSWorld-Verified
72.5%
Agentic financial analysis
Finance Agent v2
51%
Knowledge work
GDPval-AA
1676
Chart reasoning
CharXiv Reasoning
72.4%
Multimodal reasoning
MMMU-Pro
74.5%
Spatial reasoning
Blueprint-Bench 2
6.7%
Long context
MRCR v2 (8-needle) · 128k average
84.9%
Timeline
Release gapMistral Small 3 shipped 412 days before Claude Sonnet 4.6

Which is better: Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Mistral Small 3?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Mistral Small 3 don't publish scores on any of the same benchmarks, so there's no direct head-to-head comparison. Mistral Small 3 shipped 412 days before Claude Sonnet 4.6, so benchmark comparisons should account for the intervening progress.

Mistral Small 3 is an open-source / open-weight model; Claude Sonnet 4.6 is proprietary.

Direct benchmark comparisons are unavailable — Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Mistral Small 3 don't publish scores on any of the same benchmarks.

Frequently asked questions

When was Claude Sonnet 4.6 released?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 was released by Anthropic on Feb 17 2026.
When was Mistral Small 3 released?
Mistral Small 3 was released by Mistral on Jan 2025.
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Mistral Small 3 open source?
Mistral Small 3 is an open-source / open-weight model released by Mistral. Claude Sonnet 4.6 is a proprietary model released by Anthropic.

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