Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, 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 4.8 points higher (56.0 vs 51.2) but costs 2.5× as much to run the benchmark ($4057 vs $1627; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallbac… when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallba….
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 51.2 | 56.0 | +9.4% Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhig… is 9.4% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,626.81 | $4,056.65 | +149.4% Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhig… is 2.5× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 20.28s | 123.06s | +506.8% Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhig… is 506.8% 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 (Medium, Default Fallback): 9.4% more intelligence, 149.4% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 506.8% slower end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- 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.
- 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-medium/claude-opus-5-5-xhigh · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-medium/claude-opus-5-5-xhigh?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill