Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs GPT-5 mini (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or GPT-5 mini (High) by OpenAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fall… scores 24.0 points higher (40.8 vs 16.8) but costs 3.3× as much to run the benchmark ($622 vs $189; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fall… when you need intelligence above 16.8, and GPT-5 mini (High) when 16.8 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | GPT-5 mini (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 40.8 | 16.8 | −58.8% GPT-5 mini (High) is 58.8% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $622.28 | $188.66 | −69.7% GPT-5 mini (High) is 69.7% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 5.74s | 58.72s | +923.0% GPT-5 mini (High) is 923.0% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.25 / $2.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
GPT-5 mini (High) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 58.8% less intelligence, 69.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 923.0% slower end-to-end.
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 mini (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (Xhigh) scores 41.20 for $158.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)GPT-5 mini (High)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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