Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallba… scores 4.4 points higher (51.2 vs 46.8) but costs 1.6× as much to run the benchmark ($1627 vs $1027; both premium class). Pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallba… when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallba….
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 51.2 | 46.8 | −8.6% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Hi… is 8.6% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,626.81 | $1,027.40 | −36.8% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Hi… is 36.8% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.78s | 15.86s | −27.2% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Hi… is 27.2% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $2.00 / $10.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 8.6% less intelligence, 36.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 27.2% faster 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 (High, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
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-high · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-medium/claude-sonnet-5-5-high?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill