Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) 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 (Xhigh) scores 10.1 points higher (34.4 vs 24.3) but costs 5.0× as much to run the benchmark ($3255 vs $653; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) when you need intelligence above 24.3, and Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) when 24.3 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) | Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 24.3 | 34.4 | +41.6% Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhig… is 41.6% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $652.70 | $3,255.40 | +398.8% Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhig… is 5.0× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.60s | 20.97s | +143.8% Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhig… is 143.8% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $2.00 / $10.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Low): 41.6% more intelligence, 398.8% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 143.8% 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 (Xhigh) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Low)Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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