Claude Haiku 5.5 (High) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)
Which is better for the money: Claude Haiku 5.5 (High) 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.
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallba… scores 9.0 points higher (46.8 vs 37.8) but costs 11× as much to run the benchmark ($1027 vs $94.1; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallba… when you need intelligence above 37.8, and Claude Haiku 5.5 (High) when 37.8 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Haiku 5.5 (High) | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 37.8 | 46.8 | +23.8% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Hi… is 23.8% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $94.07 | $1,027.40 | +992.2% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Hi… is 11× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 29.47s | 16.86s | −42.8% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Hi… is 42.8% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.10 / $0.50 | $2.00 / $10.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Claude Haiku 5.5 (High): 23.8% more intelligence, 992.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 42.8% faster end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Haiku 5.5 (High) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- 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.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-high/claude-sonnet-5-5-high · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-high/claude-sonnet-5-5-high?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill