Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, 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 (Medium, Default Fallba… scores 8.9 points higher (51.2 vs 42.3) but costs 1.9× as much to run the benchmark ($1627 vs $860; both premium class). Pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallba… when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback).
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) | Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 42.3 | 51.2 | +21.0% Claude Opus 5.5 (Medi… is 21.0% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $860.33 | $1,626.81 | +89.1% Claude Opus 5.5 (Medi… is 89.1% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 13.42s | 20.28s | +51.1% Claude Opus 5.5 (Medi… is 51.1% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $4.00 / $20.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): 21.0% more intelligence, 89.1% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 51.1% slower end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- 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.
- Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-low/claude-opus-5-5-medium · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-low/claude-opus-5-5-medium?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill