Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)

Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, 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 (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 38.20
Total cost: $6998

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

Intelligence: 56.00
Total cost: $7260

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallbac… scores 17.8 points higher (56.0 vs 38.2) but costs 1.0× as much to run the benchmark ($7260 vs $6998; both flagship class). Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallbac… when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Sonnet 5 (Max).

Metric	Claude Sonnet 5 (Max)	Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	38.2	56.0	+46.6% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Ma… is 46.6% more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$6,998.25	$7,259.50	+3.7% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Ma… is 3.7% more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	190.29s	380.92s	+100.2% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Ma… is 100.2% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$2.00 / $10.0	$2.00 / $10.0
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Max): 46.6% more intelligence, 3.7% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 100.2% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Sonnet 5 (Max): what beats it Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) 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 (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 (Max)Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)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/claude-sonnet-5-5 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5/claude-sonnet-5-5?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill