Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) by Anthropic? 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 (Medium) scores 3.8 points higher (28.1 vs 24.3) but costs 1.9× as much to run the benchmark ($1218 vs $653; both premium class). Pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Sonnet 5 (Low).
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) | Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 24.3 | 28.1 | +15.6% Claude Sonnet 5 (Medi… is 15.6% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $652.70 | $1,218.17 | +86.6% Claude Sonnet 5 (Medi… is 86.6% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.60s | 9.02s | +4.9% Claude Sonnet 5 (Medi… is 4.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $2.00 / $10.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Low): 15.6% more intelligence, 86.6% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 4.9% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Low)Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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