Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) 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 (Xhigh) scores 17.5 points higher (34.4 vs 16.9) but costs 5.5× as much to run the benchmark ($3255 vs $594; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) 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 5 (Xhigh) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 16.9 | 34.4 | +103.6% Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhig… is 2.0× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $594.08 | $3,255.40 | +448.0% Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhig… is 5.5× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 24.38s | 26.92s | +10.4% Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhig… is 10.4% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $1.00 / $5.00 | $2.00 / $10.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) vs Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning): 103.6% more intelligence, 448.0% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 10.4% 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 5 (Xhigh) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning)Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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