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

Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 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 2026-10-25.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 49.60
Total cost: $11161

AnthropicClaude Sonnet 5 (High)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 31.70
Total cost: $2086

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback) scores 17.9 points higher (49.6 vs 31.7) but costs 5.4× as much to run the benchmark ($11161 vs $2086; both flagship class). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback) when you need intelligence above 31.7, and Claude Sonnet 5 (High) when 31.7 is enough.

Metric	Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback)	Claude Sonnet 5 (High)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	49.6	31.7	−36.1% Claude Sonnet 5 (High) is 36.1% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$11,160.86	$2,086.04	−81.3% Claude Sonnet 5 (High) is 81.3% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	85.62s	18.97s	−77.8% Claude Sonnet 5 (High) is 77.8% 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 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback): 36.1% less intelligence, 81.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 77.8% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback): what beats it Claude Sonnet 5 (High): 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 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 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback)Claude Sonnet 5 (High)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model

Matchup

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