Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Low)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)
Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 40.4% less intelligence, 4.9% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 42.1% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 40.8 | 24.3 | −40.4% Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) is 40.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $622.28 | $652.70 | +4.9% Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) is 4.9% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 6.11s | 8.68s | +42.1% Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) is 42.1% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $2.00 / $10.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- 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.
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)Claude Sonnet 5 (Low)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-medium/claude-sonnet-5-low · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-medium/claude-sonnet-5-low?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill