Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs Claude Opus 5 (Low)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Claude Opus 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 Opus 5 (Low) scores 18.7 points higher (39.4 vs 20.7) but costs 1.0× as much to run the benchmark ($1561 vs $1501; both premium class). Pick Claude Opus 5 (Low) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning).
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | Claude Opus 5 (Low) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 39.4 | +90.3% Claude Opus 5 (Low) is 90.3% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $1,560.91 | +4.0% Claude Opus 5 (Low) is 4.0% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.58s | 11.37s | −47.3% Claude Opus 5 (Low) is 47.3% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $5.00 / $25.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Opus 5 (Low) vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 90.3% more intelligence, 4.0% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 47.3% faster 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 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)Claude Opus 5 (Low)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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