Claude Opus 5.5 leads on coding scores; Mistral Large 4 costs about a tenth per output token and you can download it. Prices and scores, checked 29 Oct 2026.
Claude Opus 5.5 is the stronger coding model on every shared score we found; Mistral Large 4 costs about a tenth per output token and is the one you can download and run yourself. Pick Opus for the hardest agent work, Mistral for volume, cost or data that must stay in house. Checked 29 Oct 2026.
If you run agents on your own work, [Munder Difflin](https://harnessmd.com/download) is free and open source: a desktop app that runs a team of AI agents for all kinds of knowledge work, coding included, on your own computer. This page sits in our [Comparisons hub](https://munderdiffl.in/blog/topics/comparisons/).
## Mistral Large 4 vs Claude Opus 5.5 at a glance (checked 29 Oct 2026) [#](#mistral-large-4-vs-claude-opus-55-at-a-glance-checked-29-oct-2026)
| Mistral Large 4 | Claude Opus 5.5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Mistral | Anthropic |
| Weights | Downloadable, Mistral Ecosystem Open-Weight license | Hosted only |
| Input, per million tokens | $0.70 | $4 |
| Output, per million tokens | $2.10 | $20 |
| Cached input or cache read | $0.07 | $0.20 |
| Context window | 1M tokens | 1M tokens |
| Size | About 1T total, 52B active | Not published |
| Reasoning control | low, medium, high (default) | Adaptive thinking, medium effort by default |
Sources: Mistral’s post of 29 Oct 2026 and model card; Anthropic’s models overview and pricing page.
Which is better at coding? # #
Claude Opus 5.5, on the scores both vendors and testers published. Mistral’s post of 29 Oct 2026 gives Mistral Large 4 48% on the Artificial Analysis Coding Agent Index, “effectively tied with the leading open-weight model, GLM-5.3, while using 47% fewer tokens per task”. Artificial Analysis wrote on 28 Oct 2026 that Claude Code with Claude Opus 5.5 (max) scores 62 on the same index, the top result.
Mistral says so itself in one place: in Surge Code’s blind pairwise test, Mistral Large 4 ranked “behind only Claude Opus 5.5 among the models evaluated”, ahead of GLM-5.3, Kimi K3 and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash.
Terminal-Bench 4.0 points the same way, with a caveat: Mistral reports 41% for its model, while Kimi’s and Google’s launch tables list Claude Opus 5.5 at 66.4%. Those figures come from different vendors and harnesses, so read the gap as a direction, not an exact margin.
Which is cheaper? # #
Mistral Large 4, by a wide margin. On 29 Oct 2026, Mistral listed $0.70 per million input tokens and $2.10 per million output tokens, against $4 and $20 for Claude Opus 5.5 on Anthropic’s pricing page. That is about 5.7 times less for input and 9.5 times less for output.
Anthropic’s pricing page says batch processing saves 50%, which narrows the gap for work that can wait. Mistral’s claim of 47% fewer tokens per task is measured against GLM-5.3, not against Opus.
Self hosting removes the token bill for Mistral Large 4 but needs hundreds of gigabytes of memory; how to run Mistral Large 4 locally has the sizes.
Can you run either one yourself? # #
Only Mistral Large 4. Its weights went up on Hugging Face on 29 Oct 2026, with GGUF files for llama.cpp and a vLLM recipe for GPU servers. The licence is free to “use, modify, fine-tune, and commercialize”, except that a Model as a Service business needs a separate licence from Mistral.
Claude Opus 5.5 runs only where Anthropic serves it: the Claude API, Claude’s apps and the cloud platforms each model page lists. That is the trade: Opus gives more capability per call, Mistral gives you the file.
Pick Mistral Large 4 if…, pick Claude Opus 5.5 if… # #
Pick by what costs you more: wrong answers or token bills.
Pick Mistral Large 4 if:
- You need the model on hardware you control, or want to fine tune it.
- You run a lot of tokens and price matters more than the last points of quality.
- You work in one of the 160 plus languages Mistral lists, or want a model trained in Europe.
Pick Claude Opus 5.5 if:
- You want the top coding agent result on the Artificial Analysis index.
- You run long agent tasks where a failed run costs more than the tokens.
- You do not want to run servers.
For other match ups, see [Gemini 4 Argon vs Claude Opus 5.5](https://munderdiffl.in/blog/gemini-4-argon-vs-claude-opus-5-5/) and our page on [Mistral Large 4](https://munderdiffl.in/blog/mistral-large-4/).
## Can you use both in one team? [#](#can-you-use-both-in-one-team)
Yes. A common split is the strong hosted model for planning and review, and the cheaper or local one for bulk work.
Munder Difflin runs a team of agents for research, writing, ops and coding on engines such as Claude Code, Codex and Gemini CLI, takes work in from Slack and webhooks, and connects tools through MCP servers, skills and plugins. Some engines accept a local base URL, so an open model can drive them; see running Munder Difflin on open models. A Cloud Office and a mobile app are coming soon; how to install and use Munder Difflin covers setup.
FAQ #
Is Mistral Large 4 better than Claude Opus 5.5?
Not at coding, on the published figures. On the Artificial Analysis Coding Agent Index, Mistral's post of 29 Oct 2026 gives Mistral Large 4 48%, and Artificial Analysis gave Claude Code with Claude Opus 5.5 (max) 62 on 28 Oct 2026. Mistral's own post says graders in Surge Code's blind test ranked it behind only Claude Opus 5.5 among the models evaluated.
How much cheaper is Mistral Large 4 than Claude Opus 5.5?
About 5.7 times cheaper on input and 9.5 times on output, at list prices on 29 Oct 2026. Mistral listed $0.70 input and $2.10 output per million tokens; Anthropic listed $4 and $20 for Claude Opus 5.5.
Can you download Claude Opus 5.5 like Mistral Large 4?
No. Claude Opus 5.5 is a hosted model you call by its API ID, claude-opus-5-5, or use in Claude's apps. Mistral released the Mistral Large 4 weights on Hugging Face on 29 Oct 2026 under the Mistral Ecosystem Open-Weight license, a modified MIT license.
Do both have a 1M token context window?
Yes. Anthropic's models overview, read 29 Oct 2026, lists 1M tokens of context and 128K tokens of output for Claude Opus 5.5. Mistral's model card lists a 1M context window for Mistral Large 4, and vLLM's recipe says it validated serving up to 256K.