Claude Opus 5 (Low) vs Claude Opus 5 (Medium)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (Low) by Anthropic or Claude Opus 5 (Medium) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5 (Medium) scores 5.4 points higher (44.8 vs 39.4) but costs 1.8× as much to run the benchmark ($2732 vs $1561; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Claude Opus 5 (Medium) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Opus 5 (Low).
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (Low) | Claude Opus 5 (Medium) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 39.4 | 44.8 | +13.7% Claude Opus 5 (Medium) is 13.7% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,560.91 | $2,731.91 | +75.0% Claude Opus 5 (Medium) is 75.0% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 11.79s | 13.14s | +11.5% Claude Opus 5 (Medium) is 11.5% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $5.00 / $25.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Opus 5 (Medium) vs Claude Opus 5 (Low): 13.7% more intelligence, 75.0% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 11.5% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- Claude Opus 5 (Medium) 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 (Low)Claude Opus 5 (Medium)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-low/claude-opus-5-medium · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-low/claude-opus-5-medium?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill