Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs Claude Opus 5 (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Claude Opus 5 (High) 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 5 (High) scores 27.4 points higher (48.1 vs 20.7) but costs 2.9× as much to run the benchmark ($4332 vs $1501; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Claude Opus 5 (High) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning).
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | Claude Opus 5 (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 48.1 | +132.4% Claude Opus 5 (High) is 2.3× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $4,331.68 | +188.5% Claude Opus 5 (High) is 2.9× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.58s | 24.66s | +14.3% Claude Opus 5 (High) is 14.3% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $5.00 / $25.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Opus 5 (High) vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 132.4% more intelligence, 188.5% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 14.3% 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 5 (High) 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 5 (High)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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