Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) vs gpt-oss-20b (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or gpt-oss-20b (High) by OpenAI? 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 (Low, Default Fallbac… scores 26.9 points higher (35.9 vs 9.0) but costs 17× as much to run the benchmark ($482 vs $28.8; mid-range vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallbac… when you need intelligence above 9.0, and gpt-oss-20b (High) when 9.0 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) | gpt-oss-20b (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 35.9 | 9.0 | −74.9% gpt-oss-20b (High) is 74.9% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $482.13 | $28.81 | −94.0% gpt-oss-20b (High) is 94.0% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 6.19s | 16.79s | +171.2% gpt-oss-20b (High) is 171.2% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.05 / $0.22 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
gpt-oss-20b (High) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): 74.9% less intelligence, 94.0% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 171.2% slower end-to-end.
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-oss-20b (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)gpt-oss-20b (High)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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