Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback)

Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 35.90
Total cost: $482

AnthropicClaude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 51.90
Total cost: $2177

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallb… scores 16.0 points higher (51.9 vs 35.9) but costs 4.5× as much to run the benchmark ($2177 vs $482; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallb… when you need intelligence above 35.9, and Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallbac… when 35.9 is enough.

Metric	Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)	Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	35.9	51.9	+44.6% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xh… is 44.6% more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$482.13	$2,176.82	+351.5% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xh… is 4.5× more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	5.85s	33.91s	+479.7% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xh… is 479.7% 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 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): 44.6% more intelligence, 351.5% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 479.7% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): what beats it Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

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 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model

Matchup

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Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-low/claude-sonnet-5-5-xhigh · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-low/claude-sonnet-5-5-xhigh?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill