Claude Haiku 4.5 vs Codestral 2508
Codestral 2508 costs 5.6x less per output token than Claude Haiku 4.5 ($0.90 vs $5.00 per million). Updated October 21, 2026; 6 benchmarks have a result for both.
Claude Haiku 4.5 or Codestral 2508: which to pick
Only Claude Haiku 4.5 has a coding score, 35.6 on the Vibe Coding Index; Codestral 2508 has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Pick Codestral 2508 for output tokens 5.6x cheaper ($0.90 vs $5.00 per million) and a larger context window (256K against 200K tokens).
- Shared results
- 6
- Claude Haiku 4.5 only
- 89
- Codestral 2508 only
- 2
- Like-for-like categories
- 1 of 9
Only benchmarks that tested both models count toward a pick; a result only one model has is shown but not compared.
Which one for your work
Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, six public coding benchmarks
No call
Only Claude Haiku 4.5 has a coding score, so no call is made.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
No call
Only Claude Haiku 4.5 has a AA Intelligence Index result, 16.9.
Directional only
Agentic work
AA Agentic Index
No call
Only Claude Haiku 4.5 has a AA Agentic Index result, 8.0.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only Claude Haiku 4.5 has a GPQA Diamond result, 72.2%.
Directional only
Math
AIME
No call
Only Claude Haiku 4.5 has a AIME result, 82.7%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only Claude Haiku 4.5 has a MMLU Pro result, 78.7%.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
Claude Haiku 4.5
Claude Haiku 4.5 leads, 1122 against 1013.
Same board, both measured
Long documents
Listed context window
Codestral 2508
Codestral 2508 takes 256K tokens against 200K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Codestral 2508
Claude Haiku 4.5 $0.0035, Codestral 2508 $0.0008 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
No call
Only Claude Haiku 4.5 has the number, $0.56.
Directional only
At a glance
- Coding index
- Claude Haiku 4.5 35.6 from 4 benchmarks, Codestral 2508 not benchmarked.
- Widest category
- Web design, 12.3 points apart on average over 6 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- Design Arena: game dev: Claude Haiku 4.5 1097 against Codestral 2508 968, 16.1 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Claude Haiku 4.5 $5.00 against Codestral 2508 $0.90 per million output tokens, 5.6x apart.
- Context window
- Claude Haiku 4.5 takes 200K tokens, Codestral 2508 256K.
Benchmark by benchmark
First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.
| Category | Claude Haiku 4.5 | Bars | Codestral 2508 | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Web design | 6 | 0 | ||
| All shared boards | 6 | 0 |
CodingDirectional onlySix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index18 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Haiku 4.5 | Codestral 2508 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified | 66.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | 64.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LiveBench coding | 48.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena WebDev | 1330 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| AA Coding Index | 43.9 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | 41.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | 66.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 11.4% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | 7.5% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| ProgramBench (Vals AI) | 0.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | 43.8% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| Terminal-Bench | 35.5% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| WeirdML | 45.4% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| ALE-Bench | Not measured | 137.8 | Only Codestral 2508 measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1454 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1439 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: React | 1326 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | 1318 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 21 boards here | |||
IntelligenceDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index2 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Haiku 4.5 | Codestral 2508 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 16.9 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 142.2 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
Agentic workDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index12 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Haiku 4.5 | Codestral 2508 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Agentic Index | 8.0 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LiveBench research | 42.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LiveBench browser | 40.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LiveBench long agentic | 11.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | 31.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | 5.9% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | 10.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | 22.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| BALROG | 31.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| DeepResearch Bench | 45.5% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| Vending-Bench 2 | $459 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) | 68.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 29 boards here | |||
ReasoningDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index11 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Haiku 4.5 | Codestral 2508 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 72.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LiveBench reasoning | 61.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | 46.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 71.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| ARC-AGI | 47.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 4.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| Chess puzzles | 8.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1421 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1443 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1435 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | Not measured | 32.5% | Only Codestral 2508 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 11 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index6 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Haiku 4.5 | Codestral 2508 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | 82.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| MGSM (Vals AI) | 92.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 66.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| MATH level 5 | 96.4% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1398 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1430 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 7 boards here | |||
KnowledgeDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index13 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Haiku 4.5 | Codestral 2508 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | 78.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 81.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| CaseLaw (Vals AI) | 56.5% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | 60.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | 67.5% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | 62.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| MedQA (Vals AI) | 79.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | 32.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| SimpleQA Verified | 13.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1406 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1394 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1400 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1400 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 5 boards here | |||
Web designLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index60
| Benchmark | Claude Haiku 4.5 | Codestral 2508 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1122 | 1013 | Claude Haiku 4.5 |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1100 | 1017 | Claude Haiku 4.5 |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1097 | 968 | Claude Haiku 4.5 |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1124 | 1017 | Claude Haiku 4.5 |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1072 | 1020 | Claude Haiku 4.5 |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1115 | 1007 | Claude Haiku 4.5 |
| Design Arena: SVG | 1026 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | 1140 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LiveBench design | 59.9% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
GeneralDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index26 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Haiku 4.5 | Codestral 2508 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench data analysis | 59.3% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI) | 54.3% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 31.8% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | 85.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| Vals Multimodal Index | 42.9% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| DTBench | 73.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMCA | 30.9% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| ExploitBench | 13.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text | 1397 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1414 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1371 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1414 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1377 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1418 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: German | 1374 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1338 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1346 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: French | 1411 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1421 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1381 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1343 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1409 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1427 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1386 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1369 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Document | 1420 | Not measured | Only Claude Haiku 4.5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 20 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Haiku 4.5 | Codestral 2508 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 5 boards here | |||
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.
Chat turn
1K input + 500 output tokens
Codestral 2508 costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Codestral 2508 costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Codestral 2508 costs less
Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.
Specification differences
The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.
| Specification | Anthropic Claude Haiku 4.5 | Mistral Codestral 2508 |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Anthropic | Mistral AI |
| Weights | No public weights listed | No public weights listed |
| Released | October 15, 2025 | August 1, 2025 |
| Context window | 200K | 256K |
| Input $/Mtok | $1.00 | $0.30 |
| Output $/Mtok | $5.00 | $0.90 |
| Coding index | 35.6 | Not benchmarked |
| Independent measurements behind it | 4 | 0 |
| Cost per solved task | $0.56 | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Claude Haiku 4.5 better than Codestral 2508 for coding?
Only Claude Haiku 4.5 has a coding score, 35.6 on the Vibe Coding Index; Codestral 2508 has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Pick Codestral 2508 for output tokens 5.6x cheaper ($0.90 vs $5.00 per million) and a larger context window (256K against 200K tokens).
Which is cheaper, Claude Haiku 4.5 or Codestral 2508?
Claude Haiku 4.5 costs $1.00 per million input tokens and $5.00 per million output tokens; Codestral 2508 costs $0.30 and $0.90. Cost per solved task is known for Claude Haiku 4.5 only.
Which has the bigger context window, Claude Haiku 4.5 or Codestral 2508?
Codestral 2508, with 256K tokens against 200K.
How many benchmarks is the Claude Haiku 4.5 vs Codestral 2508 comparison based on?
6 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. Claude Haiku 4.5's coding index rests on 4 independent benchmarks and Codestral 2508's on 0. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.