Model Comparison 2026

Claude Opus 4.8 vs Codestral

Claude Opus 4.8
Anthropic · Frontier · Proprietary
$11/1M · 1M ctx
Codestral
Mistral · Budget · Proprietary
$0.48/1M · 256K ctx

Community Vote

Pick a winner in each dimension — change your vote anytime.

Output Quality
Correctness and depth of what it produces
Agentic Ability
Tool calls, instruction-following, and multi-step tasks
Speed
Tokens per second and time-to-first-token
Value for $
How much capability you get per dollar
Reliability
Consistent results — fewer refusals, loops, and format breaks

Specs & Pricing, Side by Side

Spec
Opus 4.8
Codestral
Maker
Anthropic
Mistral
Blended price / 1M
$11
$0.48
Input / output
$5.00 in · $25 out / 1M tokens
$0.30 in · $0.90 out / 1M tokens
Context window
1M
256K
Open weights
No
No
Tool use
Yes
Yes
Reasoning
Yes
No
Output Quality
9.6
6.8
Agentic Ability
9.6
6.5
Speed
7.2
9.5
Value for $
7.5
8.9
Reliability
9.5
8.8

Pricing and capabilities synced from the OpenRouter catalogue. Scores are editorial (0–10).

Verdict: Opus 4.8 or Codestral?

Updated 2026-06-22

Choose Claude Opus 4.8 if you want hard, high-stakes coding and reasoning where quality matters more than cost. Choose Codestral if you want fast completions and lightweight code edits.

In our editorial scoring, Claude Opus 4.8 leads in 3 of five dimensions (output quality, agentic ability and reliability), while Codestral leads in 2. On price, Claude Opus 4.8 runs about $11 per 1M tokens (blended) and is proprietary; Codestral is about $0.48 and proprietary.

Where Opus 4.8 falls short
  • Among the most expensive models per token
  • Slower than lighter models on simple tasks
Full Opus 4.8 breakdown →
Where Codestral falls short
  • Not for deep agentic planning
  • Quality below the larger coders
Full Codestral breakdown →

The model is half the story — the agent is the other half

The model picks the moves; the agent runs the loop, the tools, and the guardrails. Once you've chosen a model, see which agent gets the most out of it.

Compare AI agents →

Related comparisons

Opus 4.8 vs GPT-5.5Opus 4.8 vs Gemini 3.1 ProOpus 4.8 vs GLM 5.2Opus 4.8 vs Qwen3.7 MaxOpus 4.8 vs DeepSeek V4 ProOpus 4.8 vs Kimi K2.6Opus 4.8 vs Grok 4.3Opus 4.8 vs Grok 4.20