Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) vs GPT-5.5 (Xhigh)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) by Anthropic or GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) 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
GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) scores 14.1 points higher (38.4 vs 24.3) but costs 8.1× as much to run the benchmark ($5294 vs $653; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) when you need intelligence above 24.3, and Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) when 24.3 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) | GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 24.3 | 38.4 | +58.0% GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) is 58.0% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $652.70 | $5,294.36 | +711.1% GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) is 8.1× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.68s | 55.87s | +543.7% GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) is 543.7% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $5.00 / $30.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Low): 58.0% more intelligence, 711.1% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 543.7% 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.
- GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) 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 (Low)GPT-5.5 (Xhigh)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-low/gpt-5-5 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-low/gpt-5-5?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill