Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallba… scores 34.3 points higher (51.2 vs 16.9) but costs 2.7× as much to run the benchmark ($1627 vs $594; both premium class). Pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallba… when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning).
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) | Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 16.9 | 51.2 | +203.0% Claude Opus 5.5 (Medi… is 3.0× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $594.08 | $1,626.81 | +173.8% Claude Opus 5.5 (Medi… is 2.7× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 24.38s | 21.78s | −10.7% Claude Opus 5.5 (Medi… is 10.7% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $1.00 / $5.00 | $4.00 / $20.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning): 203.0% more intelligence, 173.8% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 10.7% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
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 Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning)Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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