Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) scores 36.9 points higher (57.6 vs 20.7) but costs 5.8× as much to run the benchmark ($8708 vs $1501; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) 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 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 57.6 | +178.3% Claude Opus 5.5 (Max,… is 2.8× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $8,708.20 | +480.1% Claude Opus 5.5 (Max,… is 5.8× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.58s | 670.18s | +3005.6% Claude Opus 5.5 (Max,… is 3005.6% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $4.00 / $20.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 178.3% more intelligence, 480.1% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 3005.6% slower end-to-end.
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 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-4-5-sonnet-thinking/claude-opus-5-5 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-4-5-sonnet-thinking/claude-opus-5-5?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill