Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)

Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 56.00
Total cost: $7260

AnthropicClaude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 40.80
Total cost: $622

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallbac… scores 15.2 points higher (56.0 vs 40.8) but costs 12× as much to run the benchmark ($7260 vs $622; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallbac… when you need intelligence above 40.8, and Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fall… when 40.8 is enough.

Metric	Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)	Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	56.0	40.8	−27.1% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Me… is 27.1% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$7,259.50	$622.28	−91.4% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Me… is 91.4% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	385.69s	6.11s	−98.4% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Me… is 98.4% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$2.00 / $10.0	$2.00 / $10.0
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback): 27.1% less intelligence, 91.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 98.4% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback): what beats it Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
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 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model

Matchup

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Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5/claude-sonnet-5-5-medium · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5/claude-sonnet-5-5-medium?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill