Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)
Which is better for the money: Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low) by Anthropic or Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, 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 Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) scores 28.1 points higher (57.6 vs 29.5) but costs 254× as much to run the benchmark ($8708 vs $34.3; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 29.5, and Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low) when 29.5 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low) | Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 29.5 | 57.6 | +95.3% Claude Opus 5.5 (Max,… is 95.3% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $34.31 | $8,708.20 | +25280.9% Claude Opus 5.5 (Max,… is 254× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 11.45s | 711.14s | +6110.8% Claude Opus 5.5 (Max,… is 6110.8% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.10 / $0.50 | $4.00 / $20.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) vs Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low): 95.3% more intelligence, 25280.9% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 6110.8% slower end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Medium) scores 29.90 for $31.2.
- Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-low/claude-opus-5-5 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-low/claude-opus-5-5?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill