Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)

Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, 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.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)On the frontier

Intelligence: 57.60
Total cost: $8708

AnthropicClaude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 56.00
Total cost: $7260

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) scores 1.6 points higher (57.6 vs 56.0) but costs 1.2× as much to run the benchmark ($8708 vs $7260; both flagship class). Pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallbac….

Metric	Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)	Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	57.6	56.0	−2.8% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Ma… is 2.8% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$8,708.20	$7,259.50	−16.6% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Ma… is 16.6% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	693.20s	385.69s	−44.4% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Ma… is 44.4% 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 (Max, Default Fallback) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback): 2.8% less intelligence, 16.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 44.4% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback): what beats it Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
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.

Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model

Matchup

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Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5/claude-sonnet-5-5 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5/claude-sonnet-5-5?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill