Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallba… scores 6.0 points higher (46.8 vs 40.8) but costs 1.7× as much to run the benchmark ($1027 vs $622; both premium class). Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallba… when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fall….
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 46.8 | 40.8 | −12.8% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Me… is 12.8% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,027.40 | $622.28 | −39.4% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Me… is 39.4% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 14.89s | 6.26s | −58.0% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Me… is 58.0% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $2.00 / $10.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 12.8% less intelligence, 39.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 58.0% faster end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- 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 Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-high/claude-sonnet-5-5-medium · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-high/claude-sonnet-5-5-medium?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill