Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) vs Claude Opus 5 (Low)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Claude Opus 5 (Low) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5 (Low) scores 22.5 points higher (39.4 vs 16.9) but costs 2.6× as much to run the benchmark ($1561 vs $594; both premium class). Pick Claude Opus 5 (Low) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning).
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) | Claude Opus 5 (Low) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 16.9 | 39.4 | +133.1% Claude Opus 5 (Low) is 2.3× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $594.08 | $1,560.91 | +162.7% Claude Opus 5 (Low) is 2.6× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 23.18s | 11.79s | −49.1% Claude Opus 5 (Low) is 49.1% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $1.00 / $5.00 | $5.00 / $25.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Opus 5 (Low) vs Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning): 133.1% more intelligence, 162.7% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 49.1% 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 (Low) 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 (Low)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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