Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) vs Claude Opus 5 (Medium)
Which is better for the money: Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) by Anthropic or Claude Opus 5 (Medium) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5 (Medium) scores 10.3 points higher (44.8 vs 34.5) but costs 48× as much to run the benchmark ($2732 vs $56.4; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5 (Medium) 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 (Medium) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 34.5 | 44.8 | +29.9% Claude Opus 5 (Medium) is 29.9% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $56.36 | $2,731.91 | +4747.2% Claude Opus 5 (Medium) is 48× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 13.12s | 12.85s | −2.1% Claude Opus 5 (Medium) is 2.1% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.10 / $0.50 | $5.00 / $25.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Opus 5 (Medium) vs Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium): 29.9% more intelligence, 4747.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 2.1% faster 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 5 (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium)Claude Opus 5 (Medium)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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