Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallbac… scores 4.8 points higher (56.0 vs 51.2) but costs 4.5× as much to run the benchmark ($7260 vs $1627; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallbac… when you need intelligence above 51.2, and Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallba… when 51.2 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 51.2 | 56.0 | +9.4% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Ma… is 9.4% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,626.81 | $7,259.50 | +346.2% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Ma… is 4.5× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.83s | 380.92s | +1644.9% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Ma… is 1644.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $2.00 / $10.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 9.4% more intelligence, 346.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 1644.9% 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 Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-medium/claude-sonnet-5-5 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-medium/claude-sonnet-5-5?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill