Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)

Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh) 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 (Xhigh)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 49.70
Total cost: $5868

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

Intelligence: 56.00
Total cost: $7260

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallbac… scores 6.3 points higher (56.0 vs 49.7) but costs 1.2× as much to run the benchmark ($7260 vs $5868; both flagship class). Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallbac… when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh).

Metric	Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh)	Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	49.7	56.0	+12.7% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Ma… is 12.7% more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$5,867.76	$7,259.50	+23.7% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Ma… is 23.7% more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	37.50s	385.69s	+928.5% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Ma… is 928.5% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$5.00 / $25.0	$2.00 / $10.0
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) vs Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh): 12.7% more intelligence, 23.7% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 928.5% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh): what beats it Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh) 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 (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 (Xhigh)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-xhigh/claude-sonnet-5-5 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-xhigh/claude-sonnet-5-5?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill