Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, 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 (Medium, Default Fall… scores 4.9 points higher (40.8 vs 35.9) but costs 1.3× as much to run the benchmark ($622 vs $482; premium vs mid-range cost classes). Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fall… when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallbac….
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 35.9 | 40.8 | +13.6% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Me… is 13.6% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $482.13 | $622.28 | +29.1% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Me… is 29.1% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 6.19s | 6.26s | +1.1% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Me… is 1.1% slower |
| 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 (Low, Default Fallback): 13.6% more intelligence, 29.1% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 1.1% slower end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
- 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-low/claude-sonnet-5-5-medium · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-low/claude-sonnet-5-5-medium?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill