Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 126.1% more intelligence, 31.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 28.6% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 46.8 | +126.1% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Hi… is 2.3× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $1,027.40 | −31.6% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Hi… is 31.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 20.84s | 14.89s | −28.6% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Hi… is 28.6% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $2.00 / $10.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
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 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-4-5-sonnet-thinking/claude-sonnet-5-5-high · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-4-5-sonnet-thinking/claude-sonnet-5-5-high?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill