Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) 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 Sonnet 4.6 (Max) scores 13.2 points higher (30.1 vs 16.9) but costs 8.3× as much to run the benchmark ($4925 vs $594; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) 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 Sonnet 4.6 (Max) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 16.9 | 30.1 | +78.1% Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Ma… is 78.1% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $594.08 | $4,924.80 | +729.0% Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Ma… is 8.3× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 24.36s | 163.10s | +569.5% Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Ma… is 569.5% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $1.00 / $5.00 | $3.00 / $15.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) vs Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning): 78.1% more intelligence, 729.0% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 569.5% slower 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 Sonnet 4.6 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning)Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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