Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) 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 (Xhigh) scores 13.7 points higher (34.4 vs 20.7) but costs 2.2× as much to run the benchmark ($3255 vs $1501; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning).
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 34.4 | +66.2% Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhig… is 66.2% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $3,255.40 | +116.9% Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhig… is 2.2× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.53s | 26.92s | +25.0% Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhig… is 25.0% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $2.00 / $10.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 66.2% more intelligence, 116.9% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 25.0% 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 (Xhigh) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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