Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) vs Llama 4 Maverick
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) by Anthropic or Llama 4 Maverick by Meta? 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 Sonnet 4.6 (Max) scores 20.8 points higher (30.1 vs 9.3) but costs 112× as much to run the benchmark ($4925 vs $44.0; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) when you need intelligence above 9.3, and Llama 4 Maverick when 9.3 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) | Llama 4 Maverick | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 30.1 | 9.3 | −69.1% Llama 4 Maverick is 69.1% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $4,924.80 | $43.98 | −99.1% Llama 4 Maverick is 99.1% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 75.21s | 11.18s | −85.1% Llama 4 Maverick is 85.1% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.25 / $0.92 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Llama 4 Maverick vs Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max): 69.1% less intelligence, 99.1% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 85.1% faster end-to-end.
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.
- Llama 4 Maverick is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Medium) scores 29.90 for $31.2.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max)Llama 4 MaverickToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
Compare something else
Agents:
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-4-6-adaptive/llama-4-maverick · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-4-6-adaptive/llama-4-maverick?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill