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Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Mistral Small 3.1

2 vs 0 benchmarks won

Anthropic
Claude Sonnet 4.6
Mistral
Mistral Small 3.1
Overview
CompanyAnthropicMistral
Release dateFeb 17 2026Mar 17 2025
Model type
Open sourceNoYes
Specifications
Parameters
Context window
Benchmarks
Science reasoning
GPQA Diamond
89.9%
Software engineering
SWE-Bench Verified
79.6%
Multimodal understanding
MMMU
Timeline
Release gapMistral Small 3.1 shipped 337 days before Claude Sonnet 4.6

Which is better: Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Mistral Small 3.1?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads Mistral Small 3.1 on 2 of the tracked benchmarks (GPQA Diamond, SWE-Bench Verified, MMMU). Mistral Small 3.1 shipped 337 days before Claude Sonnet 4.6, so benchmark comparisons should account for the intervening progress.

Mistral Small 3.1 is an open-source / open-weight model; Claude Sonnet 4.6 is proprietary.

Direct benchmark comparisons are unavailable — at least one of these models has not published scores on GPQA Diamond, SWE-Bench Verified, or MMMU.

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 3.1 released?
Mistral Small 3.1 was released by Mistral on Mar 17 2025.
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Mistral Small 3.1 open source?
Mistral Small 3.1 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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