Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) vs Muse Ember (Xhigh)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Muse Ember (Xhigh) by Meta? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-11-10.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) scores 0.7 points higher (34.8 vs 34.1) but costs 10× as much to run the benchmark ($980 vs $95.7; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 34.1, and Muse Ember (Xhigh) when 34.1 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) | Muse Ember (Xhigh) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 34.8 | 34.1 | −2.0% Muse Ember (Xhigh) is 2.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $979.66 | $95.73 | −90.2% Muse Ember (Xhigh) is 90.2% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 13.35s | 9.48s | −29.0% Muse Ember (Xhigh) is 29.0% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.10 / $0.50 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Muse Ember (Xhigh) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): 2.0% less intelligence, 90.2% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 29.0% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
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 52.50 for $718.
- Muse Ember (Xhigh) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)Muse Ember (Xhigh)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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