Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs GPT-5.6 Luna (Non-reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or GPT-5.6 Luna (Non-reasoning) by OpenAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-27.
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fall… scores 25.3 points higher (40.8 vs 15.5) but costs 27× as much to run the benchmark ($622 vs $23.0; premium vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fall… when you need intelligence above 15.5, and GPT-5.6 Luna (Non-reasoning) when 15.5 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | GPT-5.6 Luna (Non-reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 40.8 | 15.5 | −62.0% GPT-5.6 Luna (Non-rea… is 62.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $622.28 | $22.97 | −96.3% GPT-5.6 Luna (Non-rea… is 96.3% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 7.55s | 5.06s | −33.0% GPT-5.6 Luna (Non-rea… is 33.0% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.20 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
GPT-5.6 Luna (Non-reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 62.0% less intelligence, 96.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 33.0% faster end-to-end.
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-5.6 Luna (Non-reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-medium/gpt-5-6-luna-non-reasoning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-medium/gpt-5-6-luna-non-reasoning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill