Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs LongCat 2.0
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or LongCat 2.0 by LongCat? 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 1.6 points higher (20.7 vs 19.1) but costs 2.8× as much to run the benchmark ($1501 vs $545; both premium class). Pick Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise LongCat 2.0.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | LongCat 2.0 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 19.1 | −7.7% LongCat 2.0 is 7.7% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $544.74 | −63.7% LongCat 2.0 is 63.7% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 20.86s | 35.69s | +71.1% LongCat 2.0 is 71.1% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.75 / $2.95 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
LongCat 2.0 vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 7.7% less intelligence, 63.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 71.1% 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.
- LongCat 2.0 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)LongCat 2.0Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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