Head-to-head comparison across 1benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
Claude Opus 4.8
93
Mistral Medium 3.5 128B
79
Verified leaderboard positions: Claude Opus 4.8 #3 · Mistral Medium 3.5 128B unranked
Pick Claude Opus 4.8 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Mistral Medium 3.5 128B only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.
Coding
+1.2 difference
Claude Opus 4.8
Mistral Medium 3.5 128B
$5 / $25
$1.5 / $7.5
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
1M
256K
Pick Claude Opus 4.8 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Mistral Medium 3.5 128B only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.
Claude Opus 4.8 is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 93 to 79. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
Claude Opus 4.8 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $5.00 input / $25.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $1.50 input / $7.50 output per 1M tokens for Mistral Medium 3.5 128B. That is roughly 3.3x on output cost alone. Claude Opus 4.8 gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 256K for Mistral Medium 3.5 128B.
Claude Opus 4.8 is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 93 to 79. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Verified, where the scores are 88.6% and 77.6%.
Mistral Medium 3.5 128B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 77.6 versus 76.4. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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