Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)

Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) 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 2026-10-26.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Sonnet 4.6 (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 30.10
Total cost: $4925

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 25.9 points higher (56.0 vs 30.1) but costs 1.5× as much to run the benchmark ($7260 vs $4925; both flagship class). Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallbac… when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max).

Metric	Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max)	Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	30.1	56.0	+86.0% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Ma… is 86.0% more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$4,924.80	$7,259.50	+47.4% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Ma… is 47.4% more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	104.36s	409.04s	+292.0% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Ma… is 292.0% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$3.00 / $15.0	$2.00 / $10.0
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) vs Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max): 86.0% more intelligence, 47.4% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 292.0% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max): what beats it Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) 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 Sonnet 4.6 (Max)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-sonnet-4-6-adaptive/claude-sonnet-5-5 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-4-6-adaptive/claude-sonnet-5-5?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill