Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Low)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) scores 7.4 points higher (24.3 vs 16.9) but costs 1.1× as much to run the benchmark ($653 vs $594; both premium class). Pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning).
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) | Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 16.9 | 24.3 | +43.8% Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) is 43.8% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $594.08 | $652.70 | +9.9% Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) is 9.9% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 24.38s | 8.68s | −64.4% Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) is 64.4% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $1.00 / $5.00 | $2.00 / $10.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) vs Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning): 43.8% more intelligence, 9.9% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 64.4% 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 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning)Claude Sonnet 5 (Low)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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