Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) vs Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max)

Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) 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 (Max, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 53.40
Total cost: $13129

AnthropicClaude Sonnet 4.6 (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 30.10
Total cost: $4925

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) scores 23.3 points higher (53.4 vs 30.1) but costs 2.7× as much to run the benchmark ($13129 vs $4925; both flagship class). Pick Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max).

Metric	Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback)	Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	53.4	30.1	−43.6% Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Ma… is 43.6% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$13,128.86	$4,924.80	−62.5% Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Ma… is 62.5% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	201.53s	115.26s	−42.8% Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Ma… is 42.8% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$10.0 / $50.0	$3.00 / $15.0
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image

Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) vs Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback): 43.6% less intelligence, 62.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 42.8% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback): what beats it Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) scores 57.60 for $8708.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 (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 (Max, Default Fallback)Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max)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/claude-sonnet-4-6-adaptive · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1/claude-sonnet-4-6-adaptive?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill