Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, 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 Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallba… scores 29.9 points higher (46.8 vs 16.9) but costs 1.7× as much to run the benchmark ($1027 vs $594; both premium class). Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallba… when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning).
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 16.9 | 46.8 | +176.9% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Hi… is 2.8× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $594.08 | $1,027.40 | +72.9% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Hi… is 72.9% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 24.36s | 16.86s | −30.8% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Hi… is 30.8% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $1.00 / $5.00 | $2.00 / $10.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning): 176.9% more intelligence, 72.9% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 30.8% 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 Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning)Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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