Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) vs GPT-5.5 (Xhigh)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) 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 4.0 points higher (38.4 vs 34.4) but costs 1.6× as much to run the benchmark ($5294 vs $3255; both flagship class). Pick GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh).
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) | GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 34.4 | 38.4 | +11.6% GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) is 11.6% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $3,255.40 | $5,294.36 | +62.6% GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) is 62.6% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 26.92s | 55.87s | +107.5% GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) is 107.5% 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 (Xhigh): 11.6% more intelligence, 62.6% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 107.5% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
- 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 (Xhigh)GPT-5.5 (Xhigh)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
Compare something else
Agents:
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-xhigh/gpt-5-5 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-xhigh/gpt-5-5?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill