Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallback) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)

Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 51.20
Total cost: $5242

AnthropicClaude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 42.30
Total cost: $860

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallbac… scores 8.9 points higher (51.2 vs 42.3) but costs 6.1× as much to run the benchmark ($5242 vs $860; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallbac… when you need intelligence above 42.3, and Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) when 42.3 is enough.

Metric	Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallback)	Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	51.2	42.3	−17.4% Claude Opus 5.5 (Low,… is 17.4% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$5,241.59	$860.33	−83.6% Claude Opus 5.5 (Low,… is 83.6% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	28.41s	16.52s	−41.9% Claude Opus 5.5 (Low,… is 41.9% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$10.0 / $50.0	$4.00 / $20.0
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image

Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) vs Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallback): 17.4% less intelligence, 83.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 41.9% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallback): what beats it Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.

Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallback)Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model

Matchup

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Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1-high/claude-opus-5-5-low · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1-high/claude-opus-5-5-low?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill