Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs Claude Opus 4.8 (Max)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) 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 Opus 4.8 (Max) scores 21.1 points higher (41.8 vs 20.7) but costs 4.6× as much to run the benchmark ($6874 vs $1501; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) when you need intelligence above 20.7, and Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) when 20.7 is enough.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 41.8 | +101.9% Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) is 2.0× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $6,873.86 | +357.9% Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) is 4.6× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.53s | 37.99s | +76.5% Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) is 76.5% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $5.00 / $25.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 101.9% more intelligence, 357.9% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 76.5% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- Claude Opus 4.8 (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 Sonnet (Reasoning)Claude Opus 4.8 (Max)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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