Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)

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

Trade-off

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

Intelligence: 53.40
Total cost: $13129

AnthropicClaude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 46.80
Total cost: $1027

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) scores 6.6 points higher (53.4 vs 46.8) but costs 13× as much to run the benchmark ($13129 vs $1027; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 46.8, and Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallba… when 46.8 is enough.

Metric	Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback)	Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	53.4	46.8	−12.4% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Hi… is 12.4% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$13,128.86	$1,027.40	−92.2% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Hi… is 92.2% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	224.26s	16.86s	−92.5% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Hi… is 92.5% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$10.0 / $50.0	$2.00 / $10.0
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback): 12.4% less intelligence, 92.2% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 92.5% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback): what beats it Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 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 5.5 (High, 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 (Max, Default Fallback)Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, 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/claude-sonnet-5-5-high · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1/claude-sonnet-5-5-high?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill