Claude Opus 5 (Medium) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (Medium) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5 (Medium) scores 16.7 points higher (44.8 vs 28.1) but costs 2.2× as much to run the benchmark ($2732 vs $1218; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Claude Opus 5 (Medium) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium).
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (Medium) | Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 44.8 | 28.1 | −37.3% Claude Sonnet 5 (Medi… is 37.3% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,731.91 | $1,218.17 | −55.4% Claude Sonnet 5 (Medi… is 55.4% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 12.70s | 8.58s | −32.4% Claude Sonnet 5 (Medi… is 32.4% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $2.00 / $10.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) vs Claude Opus 5 (Medium): 37.3% less intelligence, 55.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 32.4% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- 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 Sonnet 5 (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude Opus 5 (Medium)Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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