Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5 (High) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)
Claude Sonnet 5 (High) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 38.1% less intelligence, 28.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 13.1% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Claude Sonnet 5 (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 51.2 | 31.7 | −38.1% Claude Sonnet 5 (High) is 38.1% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,626.81 | $2,086.04 | +28.2% Claude Sonnet 5 (High) is 28.2% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.83s | 18.97s | −13.1% Claude Sonnet 5 (High) is 13.1% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $2.00 / $10.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Today's Pareto frontier
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 (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)Claude Sonnet 5 (High)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-medium/claude-sonnet-5-high · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-medium/claude-sonnet-5-high?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill