Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, 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 (Xhigh, Default Fallbac… scores 13.7 points higher (56.0 vs 42.3) but costs 4.7× as much to run the benchmark ($4057 vs $860; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallbac… when you need intelligence above 42.3, and Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) when 42.3 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) | Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 42.3 | 56.0 | +32.4% Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhig… is 32.4% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $860.33 | $4,056.65 | +371.5% Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhig… is 4.7× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 13.42s | 123.06s | +817.0% Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhig… is 817.0% 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 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): 32.4% more intelligence, 371.5% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 817.0% 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 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
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-xhigh · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-low/claude-opus-5-5-xhigh?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill