Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5 (High) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 21.9 points higher (53.6 vs 31.7) but costs 1.0× as much to run the benchmark ($2172 vs $2086; both flagship class). Pick Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Sonnet 5 (High).
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Claude Sonnet 5 (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 53.6 | 31.7 | −40.9% Claude Sonnet 5 (High) is 40.9% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,172.43 | $2,086.04 | −4.0% Claude Sonnet 5 (High) is 4.0% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 33.81s | 15.10s | −55.3% Claude Sonnet 5 (High) is 55.3% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $2.00 / $10.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Sonnet 5 (High) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 40.9% less intelligence, 4.0% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 55.3% faster end-to-end.
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 Sonnet 5 (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)Claude Sonnet 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-sonnet-5-high · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-high/claude-sonnet-5-high?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill