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Claude Haiku 4 vs Mistral Small

A complete head-to-head: pricing, context window, benchmarks, modality coverage, and openness, with a programmatic verdict synthesized from the underlying data.

Updated

Claude Haiku 4 specs · Mistral Small specs
Verdict by category
  • PriceMistral Small

    Mistral Small publishes pricing ($0.60 / 1M output tokens) while Claude Haiku 4 does not.

  • Context windowClaude Haiku 4

    Claude Haiku 4 accepts 200K tokens vs 128K, 1.6× the room for long documents and codebases.

  • BenchmarksTie

    No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores.

  • ModalitiesClaude Haiku 4

    Claude Haiku 4 supports 2 modalities (text, vision) vs 1 for Mistral Small.

  • OpennessMistral Small

    Mistral Small ships open weights (Apache-2.0); Claude Haiku 4 is API-only.

It's a genuine coin-flip between Claude Haiku 4 and Mistral Small: 2 category wins each, with the rest tied. Mistral Small publishes pricing ($0.60 / 1M output tokens) while Claude Haiku 4 does not. Claude Haiku 4 accepts 200K tokens vs 128K, 1.6× the room for long documents and codebases.

No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores. They differ in modality coverage, Claude Haiku 4 handles text, vision while Mistral Small handles text, which can be the deciding factor before you even look at benchmarks. Mistral Small ships open weights (Apache-2.0); Claude Haiku 4 is API-only.

Claude Haiku 4 is the newer of the two, released 13 months after Mistral Small, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. Claude Haiku 4 is usually picked for summarization and customer support workloads, while Mistral Small sees more deployments in cheapest llm and fastest llm. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.

Side-by-side specs

SpecClaude Haiku 4Mistral Small
ProviderAnthropicMistral
ReleasedOct 2025Sep 2024
Modalitiestext, visiontext
Context window200K tokens128K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1MPricing not published$0.20 / 1M tokens
Output · 1MPricing not published$0.60 / 1M tokens
Knowledge cutoff,,
Open weightsNoYes (Apache-2.0)
API availableYesYes

Pricing at scale

What you'd actually pay at typical workloads. Numbers come from each model's published per-million-token rates.

  • Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day, vs $1.50
  • Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day, vs $15.00
  • RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day, vs $33.60

Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates).

Price calculator

Estimated spend for the listed models at your usage. Numbers are derived from each model's published per-million-token rates.

  • Claude Haiku 4Pricing unavailable
  • Mistral Small$0.050

Benchmarks compared

Only sourced numbers. Where a benchmark is missing for one model we show the available value rather than fabricating the other.

Benchmark scores not yet available. We only publish numbers we can source from official model cards or independent leaderboards, see methodology.
Pick Claude Haiku 4 if

Claude Haiku 4 fits when…

  • Fast and cheap for an Anthropic model
  • Inherits Claude's sensible defaults
  • Vision support included
  • Long-context tasks, handles 200K tokens vs 128K for Mistral Small.
  • Multimodal needs covering vision.
Pick Mistral Small if

Mistral Small fits when…

  • Apache-2.0 open-weight
  • Fast and cheap
  • Self-hosting and on-prem requirements, open weights (Apache-2.0).
Don't want either?

Consider Claude Opus 4.7

Anthropic's mid-2026 flagship, ahead on SWE-bench, agent reliability, and writing quality.

See Claude Opus 4.7 specsClaude Haiku 4 vs Claude Opus 4.7Mistral Small vs Claude Opus 4.7

Frequently asked

  • Is Claude Haiku 4 or Mistral Small cheaper?
    Per-token pricing isn't published for at least one of these models, check each model's spec page for current rates.
  • Which has the larger context window?
    Claude Haiku 4 accepts 200K tokens vs 128K for Mistral Small.
  • Is Claude Haiku 4 or Mistral Small better for coding?
    Both Claude Haiku 4 and Mistral Small are competitive on coding benchmarks. See each model's individual spec page for HumanEval and SWE-bench scores where published. For an opinionated pick, consult our Best LLM for Coding ranking.
  • Are either of these models open source?
    Mistral Small ships open weights (Apache-2.0). Claude Haiku 4 is API-only.
  • When were Claude Haiku 4 and Mistral Small released?
    Claude Haiku 4 was released by Anthropic on 2025-10-01. Mistral Small was released by Mistral on 2024-09-18.
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