Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Claude Opus 5 (Max)
Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Claude Opus 5 (Max) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-11-10.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallback)
Claude Opus 5 (Max) vs Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallback): 21.6% less intelligence, 168.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 171.0% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Claude Opus 5 (Max) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 56.4 | 44.2 | −21.6% Claude Opus 5 (Max) is 21.6% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $3,359.66 | $9,009.82 | +168.2% Claude Opus 5 (Max) is 2.7× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 28.35s | 76.83s | +171.0% Claude Opus 5 (Max) is 171.0% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $8.00 / $40.0 | $5.00 / $25.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Claude Opus 5 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Fable 5.2 (High, Default Fallback) scores 61.80 for $7106.
Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallback)Claude Opus 5 (Max)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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