Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)
Which is better for the money: Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) by Anthropic or Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, 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 (Low, Default Fallback) scores 7.8 points higher (42.3 vs 34.5) but costs 15× as much to run the benchmark ($860 vs $56.4; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) 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 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 34.5 | 42.3 | +22.6% Claude Opus 5.5 (Low,… is 22.6% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $56.36 | $860.33 | +1426.5% Claude Opus 5.5 (Low,… is 15× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 14.74s | 15.14s | +2.7% Claude Opus 5.5 (Low,… is 2.7% 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 (Low, Default Fallback) vs Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium): 22.6% more intelligence, 1426.5% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 2.7% slower end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-medium/claude-opus-5-5-low · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-medium/claude-opus-5-5-low?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill