Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) vs Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallback)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-11-10.
Depends on your budget
Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallb… scores 49.0 points higher (56.4 vs 7.4) but costs 6.2× as much to run the benchmark ($3360 vs $541; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallb… when you need intelligence above 7.4, and Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) when 7.4 is enough.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) | Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 7.4 | 56.4 | +662.2% Claude Fable 5.2 (Med… is 7.6× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $541.07 | $3,359.66 | +520.9% Claude Fable 5.2 (Med… is 6.2× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 27.49s | 28.35s | +3.1% Claude Fable 5.2 (Med… is 3.1% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $1.00 / $5.00 | $8.00 / $40.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning): 662.2% more intelligence, 520.9% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 3.1% 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 (Medium) scores 46.30 for $389.
- Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
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-5-2-medium · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-4-5-haiku-reasoning/claude-fable-5-2-medium?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill