Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Max)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5 (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 Sonnet 5 (Max) scores 17.5 points higher (38.2 vs 20.7) but costs 4.7× as much to run the benchmark ($6998 vs $1501; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5 (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 Sonnet 5 (Max) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 38.2 | +84.5% Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) is 84.5% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $6,998.25 | +366.2% Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) is 4.7× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.58s | 190.29s | +781.8% Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) is 781.8% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $2.00 / $10.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 84.5% more intelligence, 366.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 781.8% 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 Sonnet 5 (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 Sonnet 5 (Max)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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