Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Muse Ember (Xhigh)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, 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 (Medium, Default Fallba… scores 14.1 points higher (48.2 vs 34.1) but costs 21× as much to run the benchmark ($2031 vs $95.7; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallba… when you need intelligence above 34.1, and Muse Ember (Xhigh) when 34.1 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Muse Ember (Xhigh) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 48.2 | 34.1 | −29.3% Muse Ember (Xhigh) is 29.3% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,031.27 | $95.73 | −95.3% Muse Ember (Xhigh) is 95.3% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 29.13s | 9.48s | −67.5% Muse Ember (Xhigh) is 67.5% 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 (Medium, Default Fallback): 29.3% less intelligence, 95.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 67.5% faster end-to-end.
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 54.60 for $1124.
- Muse Ember (Xhigh) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)Muse Ember (Xhigh)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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