Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) vs GPT-6 Astra (High)

Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or GPT-6 Astra (High) by OpenAI? 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

OpenAIGPT-6 Astra (High)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 50.90
Total cost: $2925

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GPT-6 Astra (High) scores 15.0 points higher (50.9 vs 35.9) but costs 6.1× as much to run the benchmark ($2925 vs $482; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GPT-6 Astra (High) 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)	GPT-6 Astra (High)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	35.9	50.9	+41.8% GPT-6 Astra (High) is 41.8% more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$482.13	$2,925.01	+506.7% GPT-6 Astra (High) is 6.1× more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	5.88s	93.68s	+1493.2% GPT-6 Astra (High) is 1493.2% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$2.00 / $10.0	$10.0 / $50.0
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image

GPT-6 Astra (High) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): 41.8% more intelligence, 506.7% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 1493.2% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): what beats it GPT-6 Astra (High): 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.
GPT-6 Astra (High) 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)GPT-6 Astra (High)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/gpt-6-astra-high · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-low/gpt-6-astra-high?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill