Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking vs Mixtral 8x22B Instruct v0.1

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across knowledge, coding, math, and reasoning.

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 39 to 28. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking is the reasoning model in the pair, while Mixtral 8x22B Instruct v0.1 is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 64K for Mixtral 8x22B Instruct v0.1.

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Mixtral 8x22B Instruct v0.1 only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Knowledge

Mixtral 8x22B Instruct v0.1

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

34

Mixtral 8x22B Instruct v0.1

71.4

38
MMLU
71.4
37
GPQA
-
35
SuperGPQA
-
33
OpenBookQA
-
53
MMLU-Pro
-
8
HLE
-

Coding

Mixtral 8x22B Instruct v0.1

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

21.7

Mixtral 8x22B Instruct v0.1

54.8

30
HumanEval
54.8
20
SWE-bench Verified
-
15
LiveCodeBench
-

Mathematics

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking
38
AIME 2023
-
40
AIME 2024
-
39
AIME 2025
-
34
HMMT Feb 2023
-
36
HMMT Feb 2024
-
35
HMMT Feb 2025
-
37
BRUMO 2025
-
62
MATH-500
-

Reasoning

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking
36
SimpleQA
-
34
MuSR
-
67
BBH
-

Instruction Following

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking
66
IFEval
-

Multilingual

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking
60
MGSM
-

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking or Mixtral 8x22B Instruct v0.1?

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking is ahead overall, 39 to 28. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU, where the scores are 38 and 71.4.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking or Mixtral 8x22B Instruct v0.1?

Mixtral 8x22B Instruct v0.1 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 71.4 versus 34. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking or Mixtral 8x22B Instruct v0.1?

Mixtral 8x22B Instruct v0.1 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 54.8 versus 21.7. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 9, 2026

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