Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Beam 1.0
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Beam 1.0 by Reflection? 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 5.5 (High, Default Fallba… scores 16.5 points higher (46.8 vs 30.3) but costs 3.2× as much to run the benchmark ($1027 vs $319; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallba… when you need intelligence above 30.3, and Beam 1.0 when 30.3 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Beam 1.0 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 46.8 | 30.3 | −35.3% Beam 1.0 is 35.3% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,027.40 | $318.73 | −69.0% Beam 1.0 is 69.0% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 14.89s | 8.02s | −46.1% Beam 1.0 is 46.1% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.40 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Beam 1.0 vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 35.3% less intelligence, 69.0% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 46.1% faster end-to-end.
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.
- Beam 1.0 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)Beam 1.0Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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