Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low) vs Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh)
Which is better for the money: Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low) by Anthropic or Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh) scores 20.2 points higher (49.7 vs 29.5) but costs 171× as much to run the benchmark ($5868 vs $34.3; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh) 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 (Xhigh) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 29.5 | 49.7 | +68.5% Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh) is 68.5% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $34.31 | $5,867.76 | +17002.2% Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh) is 171× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 11.45s | 40.34s | +252.3% Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh) is 252.3% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.10 / $0.50 | $5.00 / $25.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh) vs Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low): 68.5% more intelligence, 17002.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 252.3% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
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 (Xhigh) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low)Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
Compare something else
Agents:
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-low/claude-opus-5-xhigh · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-low/claude-opus-5-xhigh?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill