Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (High)

Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5 (High) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.

Trade-off

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

Intelligence: 53.40
Total cost: $13129

AnthropicClaude Sonnet 5 (High)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 31.70
Total cost: $2086

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) scores 21.7 points higher (53.4 vs 31.7) but costs 6.3× as much to run the benchmark ($13129 vs $2086; both flagship class). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 31.7, and Claude Sonnet 5 (High) when 31.7 is enough.

Metric	Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback)	Claude Sonnet 5 (High)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	53.4	31.7	−40.6% Claude Sonnet 5 (High) is 40.6% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$13,128.86	$2,086.04	−84.1% Claude Sonnet 5 (High) is 84.1% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	201.72s	15.10s	−92.5% Claude Sonnet 5 (High) 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 (High) vs Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback): 40.6% less intelligence, 84.1% 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 (High): 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 (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.

Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback)Claude Sonnet 5 (High)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-high · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1/claude-sonnet-5-high?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill