Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback)
Which is better for the money: Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) by Anthropic or Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, 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 (Xhigh, Default Fallbac… scores 21.5 points higher (56.0 vs 34.5) but costs 72× as much to run the benchmark ($4057 vs $56.4; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallbac… 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 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 34.5 | 56.0 | +62.3% Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhig… is 62.3% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $56.36 | $4,056.65 | +7097.7% Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhig… is 72× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 15.75s | 127.77s | +711.2% Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhig… is 711.2% 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 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) vs Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium): 62.3% more intelligence, 7097.7% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 711.2% 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 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
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-xhigh · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-medium/claude-opus-5-5-xhigh?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill