Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)
Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)
Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback): 9.6% more intelligence, 45.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 107.9% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 48.9 | 53.6 | +9.6% Claude Opus 5.5 (High… is 9.6% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $3,983.28 | $2,172.43 | −45.5% Claude Opus 5.5 (High… is 45.5% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 18.10s | 37.63s | +107.9% Claude Opus 5.5 (High… is 107.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $10.0 / $50.0 | $4.00 / $20.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
- Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback)Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1-medium/claude-opus-5-5-high · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1-medium/claude-opus-5-5-high?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill