Claude 3.7 Sonnet vs Mistral Large 3: which model should you choose?
We compared Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Mistral Large 3 on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Mistral Large 3 has the stronger average benchmark score; Mistral Large 3 is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet
Claude 3.7 Sonnet is a multimodal model from Anthropic. It offers a 200,000-token context window, costs $14.91 per million input tokens and $74.27 per million output tokens, and averages 81.6 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $14.91 / 1M
- Output
- $74.27 / 1M
- Context
- 200,000
- Avg score
- 81.6
- Open weights
- No
Mistral Large 3
Mistral Large 3 is a multimodal model from Mistral AI. It offers a 128,000-token context window, costs $5.41 per million input tokens and $23.83 per million output tokens, and averages 81.7 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $5.41 / 1M
- Output
- $23.83 / 1M
- Context
- 128,000
- Avg score
- 81.7
- Open weights
- Yes
Specification comparison
| Spec | Claude 3.7 Sonnet | Mistral Large 3 | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $14.91 | $5.41 | B |
| Output price / 1M | $74.27 | $23.83 | B |
| Context window | 200,000 | 128,000 | A |
| Max output | 128,000 | 4,096 | A |
| Average score | 81.6 | 81.7 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1451.9 | 1448.6 | A |
| Open weights | No | Yes | B |
Benchmark comparison
Claude 3.7 Sonnet wins 5, Mistral Large 3 wins 7, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Claude 3.7 Sonnet | Mistral Large 3 | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 83.5 | 84.6 | 1.1 | Mistral Large 3 |
| GPQA Diamond | 80.2 | 79.6 | 0.6 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet |
| SWE-bench Verified | 70.1 | 71.3 | 1.2 | Mistral Large 3 |
| HumanEval | 85.7 | 88.6 | 2.9 | Mistral Large 3 |
| MATH-500 | 88.9 | 84.1 | 4.8 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet |
| AIME 2025 | 81.2 | 78.3 | 2.9 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet |
| LiveCodeBench | 75.0 | 74.4 | 0.6 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet |
| IFEval | 88.5 | 89.8 | 1.3 | Mistral Large 3 |
| TruthfulQA | 81.7 | 83.7 | 2.0 | Mistral Large 3 |
| HellaSwag | 87.6 | 88.2 | 0.6 | Mistral Large 3 |
| MMMU | 75.5 | 76.2 | 0.7 | Mistral Large 3 |
| Arena Elo | 1451.9 | 1448.6 | 3.3 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Claude 3.7 Sonnet costs about $29.75 per million tokens and Mistral Large 3 costs about $10.02. Mistral Large 3 is roughly 66% cheaper than Claude 3.7 Sonnet. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet has the larger context window at 200,000 tokens, compared with 128,000 for Mistral Large 3. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Claude 3.7 Sonnet wins 5, Mistral Large 3 wins 7, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Mistral Large 3 leads Claude 3.7 Sonnet by 0.1 points (81.7 versus 81.6).
The price picture favours Mistral Large 3. The context picture favours Claude 3.7 Sonnet. Those two dimensions often matter more than a few benchmark points once a model is good enough for the task.
If you need a single default, start with Mistral Large 3 for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.
Choose Claude 3.7 Sonnet if
- You need the larger 200,000-token context window.
- You need the larger 128,000-token output limit.
Choose Mistral Large 3 if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
- You need open weights for self-hosting or fine-tuning.
FAQ
Is Claude 3.7 Sonnet better than Mistral Large 3?
On the index average, Mistral Large 3 leads Claude 3.7 Sonnet by 0.1 points (81.7 versus 81.6). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Claude 3.7 Sonnet wins 5 benchmarks, Mistral Large 3 wins 7.
Which is cheaper, Claude 3.7 Sonnet or Mistral Large 3?
Mistral Large 3 is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $10.02 per million tokens, versus $29.75 for Claude 3.7 Sonnet.
Which has the larger context window?
Claude 3.7 Sonnet has the larger context window at 200,000 tokens. Mistral Large 3 has 128,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
Claude 3.7 Sonnet is proprietary; Mistral Large 3 is open weights.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with Mistral Large 3 for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.