Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Low)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) 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 (High, Default Fallback) scores 29.3 points higher (53.6 vs 24.3) but costs 3.3× as much to run the benchmark ($2172 vs $653; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 24.3, and Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) when 24.3 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 53.6 | 24.3 | −54.7% Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) is 54.7% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,172.43 | $652.70 | −70.0% Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) is 70.0% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 33.81s | 8.60s | −74.6% Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) is 74.6% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $2.00 / $10.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 54.7% less intelligence, 70.0% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 74.6% faster end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-high/claude-sonnet-5-low · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-high/claude-sonnet-5-low?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill