Claude Opus 5 (High) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (High) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback)
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) vs Claude Opus 5 (High): 7.9% more intelligence, 49.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 25.5% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (High) | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 48.1 | 51.9 | +7.9% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xh… is 7.9% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $4,331.68 | $2,176.82 | −49.7% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xh… is 49.7% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 26.50s | 33.27s | +25.5% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xh… is 25.5% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $2.00 / $10.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5 (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
Claude Opus 5 (High)Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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