Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs GPT-5.5 (Xhigh)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) by OpenAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)
GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 17.9% less intelligence, 415.3% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 201.9% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 46.8 | 38.4 | −17.9% GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) is 17.9% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,027.40 | $5,294.36 | +415.3% GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) is 5.2× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 14.89s | 44.96s | +201.9% GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) is 201.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $5.00 / $30.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Today's Pareto frontier
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.
- GPT-5.5 (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 (High, Default Fallback)GPT-5.5 (Xhigh)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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