Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) vs Claude Opus 4.8 (Max)
Which is better for the money: Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) by Anthropic or Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) scores 7.3 points higher (41.8 vs 34.5) but costs 122× as much to run the benchmark ($6874 vs $56.4; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) when you need intelligence above 34.5, and Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) when 34.5 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) | Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 34.5 | 41.8 | +21.2% Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) is 21.2% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $56.36 | $6,873.86 | +12096.3% Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) is 122× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 10.41s | 36.92s | +254.7% Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) is 254.7% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.10 / $0.50 | $5.00 / $25.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) vs Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium): 21.2% more intelligence, 12096.3% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 254.7% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) 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 (Medium)Claude Opus 4.8 (Max)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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