Claude Haiku 5.5 (Xhigh) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)
Which is better for the money: Claude Haiku 5.5 (Xhigh) 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 2026-10-24.
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) scores 1.1 points higher (42.3 vs 41.2) but costs 5.5× as much to run the benchmark ($860 vs $158; 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 41.2, and Claude Haiku 5.5 (Xhigh) when 41.2 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Haiku 5.5 (Xhigh) | Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 41.2 | 42.3 | +2.7% Claude Opus 5.5 (Low,… is 2.7% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $157.58 | $860.33 | +446.0% Claude Opus 5.5 (Low,… is 5.5× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 59.82s | 13.42s | −77.6% Claude Opus 5.5 (Low,… is 77.6% faster |
| 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 (Xhigh): 2.7% more intelligence, 446.0% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 77.6% faster end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Haiku 5.5 (Xhigh) 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-xhigh/claude-opus-5-5-low · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-xhigh/claude-opus-5-5-low?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill