Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs Claude Opus 5 (Medium)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Claude Opus 5 (Medium) 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 (Medium) scores 24.1 points higher (44.8 vs 20.7) but costs 1.8× as much to run the benchmark ($2732 vs $1501; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Claude Opus 5 (Medium) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning).
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | Claude Opus 5 (Medium) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 44.8 | +116.4% Claude Opus 5 (Medium) is 2.2× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $2,731.91 | +82.0% Claude Opus 5 (Medium) is 82.0% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.58s | 12.85s | −40.5% Claude Opus 5 (Medium) is 40.5% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $5.00 / $25.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Opus 5 (Medium) vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 116.4% more intelligence, 82.0% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 40.5% 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 (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)Claude Opus 5 (Medium)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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