Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Max)
Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback)
Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) vs Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback): 21.9% less intelligence, 75.7% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 1110.9% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 48.9 | 38.2 | −21.9% Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) is 21.9% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $3,983.28 | $6,998.25 | +75.7% Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) is 75.7% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 16.18s | 195.92s | +1110.9% Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) is 1110.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $10.0 / $50.0 | $2.00 / $10.0 | |
| 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 Sonnet 5 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback)Claude Sonnet 5 (Max)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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