Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium)
Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 35.7% more intelligence, 18.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 56.8% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 28.1 | +35.7% Claude Sonnet 5 (Medi… is 35.7% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $1,218.17 | −18.9% Claude Sonnet 5 (Medi… is 18.9% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 20.86s | 9.01s | −56.8% Claude Sonnet 5 (Medi… is 56.8% 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 (Medium) 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 Sonnet 5 (Medium)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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