Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) vs Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallback)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Depends on your budget
Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallbac… scores 34.3 points higher (51.2 vs 16.9) but costs 8.8× as much to run the benchmark ($5242 vs $594; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallbac… when you need intelligence above 16.9, and Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) when 16.9 is enough.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) | Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallback) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 16.9 | 51.2 | +203.0% Claude Fable 5.1 (Hig… is 3.0× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $594.08 | $5,241.59 | +782.3% Claude Fable 5.1 (Hig… is 8.8× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 24.36s | 28.41s | +16.6% Claude Fable 5.1 (Hig… is 16.6% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $1.00 / $5.00 | $10.0 / $50.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallback) vs Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning): 203.0% more intelligence, 782.3% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 16.6% slower end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-4-5-haiku-reasoning/claude-fable-5-1-high · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-4-5-haiku-reasoning/claude-fable-5-1-high?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill