Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback)
Which is better for the money: Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-27.
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallb… scores 22.4 points higher (51.9 vs 29.5) but costs 63× as much to run the benchmark ($2177 vs $34.3; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallb… 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 Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 29.5 | 51.9 | +75.9% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xh… is 75.9% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $34.31 | $2,176.82 | +6244.6% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xh… is 63× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 11.44s | 34.85s | +204.6% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xh… is 204.6% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.10 / $0.50 | $2.00 / $10.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) vs Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low): 75.9% more intelligence, 6244.6% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 204.6% 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 Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-low/claude-sonnet-5-5-xhigh · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-low/claude-sonnet-5-5-xhigh?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill