Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback) vs Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max)

Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 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 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 49.60
Total cost: $11161

AnthropicClaude Sonnet 4.6 (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 30.10
Total cost: $4925

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback) scores 19.5 points higher (49.6 vs 30.1) but costs 2.3× as much to run the benchmark ($11161 vs $4925; both flagship class). Pick Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max).

Metric	Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback)	Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	49.6	30.1	−39.3% Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Ma… is 39.3% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$11,160.86	$4,924.80	−55.9% Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Ma… is 55.9% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	85.47s	104.36s	+22.1% Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Ma… is 22.1% slower
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 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback): 39.3% less intelligence, 55.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 22.1% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback): what beats it Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 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 (Max, Opus 4.8 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/claude-sonnet-4-6-adaptive · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5/claude-sonnet-4-6-adaptive?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill