Claude Opus 5 (Low) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (Low) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Claude Opus 5 (Low): 18.8% more intelligence, 34.2% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 26.3% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (Low) | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 39.4 | 46.8 | +18.8% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Hi… is 18.8% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,560.91 | $1,027.40 | −34.2% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Hi… is 34.2% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 11.79s | 14.89s | +26.3% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Hi… is 26.3% 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 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Claude Opus 5 (Low)Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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