Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Claude Opus 5 (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Claude Opus 5 (High) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)
Claude Opus 5 (High) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 10.3% less intelligence, 99.4% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 37.9% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Claude Opus 5 (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 53.6 | 48.1 | −10.3% Claude Opus 5 (High) is 10.3% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,172.43 | $4,331.68 | +99.4% Claude Opus 5 (High) is 99.4% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 33.81s | 20.99s | −37.9% Claude Opus 5 (High) is 37.9% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $5.00 / $25.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Claude Opus 5 (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)Claude Opus 5 (High)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
Compare something else
Agents:
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-high/claude-opus-5-high · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-high/claude-opus-5-high?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill