Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs Llama 4 Maverick
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Llama 4 Maverick by Meta? 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 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) scores 11.4 points higher (20.7 vs 9.3) but costs 34× as much to run the benchmark ($1501 vs $44.0; premium vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) when you need intelligence above 9.3, and Llama 4 Maverick when 9.3 is enough.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | Llama 4 Maverick | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 9.3 | −55.1% Llama 4 Maverick is 55.1% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $43.98 | −97.1% Llama 4 Maverick is 97.1% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.58s | 10.45s | −51.6% Llama 4 Maverick is 51.6% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.25 / $0.92 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Llama 4 Maverick vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 55.1% less intelligence, 97.1% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 51.6% 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.
- Llama 4 Maverick is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Medium) scores 29.90 for $31.2.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)Llama 4 MaverickToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights 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/llama-4-maverick · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-4-5-sonnet-thinking/llama-4-maverick?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill