Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs GPT-5.5 (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or GPT-5.5 (High) by OpenAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)
GPT-5.5 (High) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 9.3% less intelligence, 448.1% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 216.1% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | GPT-5.5 (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 40.8 | 37.0 | −9.3% GPT-5.5 (High) is 9.3% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $622.28 | $3,410.76 | +448.1% GPT-5.5 (High) is 5.5× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 6.26s | 19.79s | +216.1% GPT-5.5 (High) is 216.1% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $5.00 / $30.0 | |
| 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.
- GPT-5.5 (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)GPT-5.5 (High)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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