Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Beam 1.0
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Beam 1.0 by Reflection? 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 (Medium, Default Fall… scores 10.5 points higher (40.8 vs 30.3) but costs 2.0× as much to run the benchmark ($622 vs $319; premium vs mid-range cost classes). Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fall… when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Beam 1.0.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Beam 1.0 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 40.8 | 30.3 | −25.7% Beam 1.0 is 25.7% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $622.28 | $318.73 | −48.8% Beam 1.0 is 48.8% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 6.26s | 8.02s | +28.1% Beam 1.0 is 28.1% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.40 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Beam 1.0 vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 25.7% less intelligence, 48.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 28.1% 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.
- Beam 1.0 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)Beam 1.0Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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