Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh)
Which is better for the money: Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 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 Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) scores 4.9 points higher (34.4 vs 29.5) but costs 95× as much to run the benchmark ($3255 vs $34.3; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 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 Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 29.5 | 34.4 | +16.6% Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhig… is 16.6% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $34.31 | $3,255.40 | +9388.2% Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhig… is 95× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 11.45s | 32.78s | +186.3% Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhig… is 186.3% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.10 / $0.50 | $2.00 / $10.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) vs Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low): 16.6% more intelligence, 9388.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 186.3% 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 Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low)Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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