Side by side · November 2026

Claude Fable 5.2 vs Claude Sonnet 5.5

Claude Fable 5.2 scores higher on the Models at Work leaderboard (71 vs 66 out of 100). On independent tests alone, Claude Fable 5.2 is ahead (100 vs 68). Claude Sonnet 5.5 is cheaper: 1,000 support replies cost about $10 at list price, against $40 on Claude Fable 5.2, which is 4 times as much. On the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, one of the independent tests, Claude Fable 5.2 leads 65 to 55.

Updated Nov 12, 2026 · every number links to who measured it

	Claude Fable 5.2 · Anthropic	Claude Sonnet 5.5 · Anthropic
Leaderboard rank	#3	#10
Score (0–100)	71	66
Kind of work	Hardest problems	Everyday default
Price per 1M tokens	$8 to read · $40 to write	$2 to read · $10 to write
Reads at once	1M tokens (about 750,000 words)	1M tokens (about 750,000 words)
Where you can get it	Claude Team and Enterprise, Amazon Bedrock, Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform (Google Cloud), Microsoft Foundry	Claude Team and Enterprise, Amazon Bedrock, Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform (Google Cloud), Microsoft Foundry, Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot
Can a company host it itself	No	No
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index	65	55
Humanity's Last Exam, Diamond (Scale)	72.40	37.50
Humanity's Sixth Sense (Scale)	59.50	Not measured
Epoch Capabilities Index	173	Not measured
Best for	Financial and technical analysis with no room for error, Multi-step research, Work Claude Opus 5.5 gets wrong	Support replies at volume, Drafting proposals and reports, Summarising meetings and long documents, Answering questions from company documents

Cost of 1,000 jobs

1,000 of these	Claude Fable 5.2	Claude Sonnet 5.5
Support repliesthe customer message, the account notes and two help articles read; a 300-word reply written	$40	$10
Documents processeda two-page invoice or form read; the fields pulled out	$28	$7
Calls summariseda 40-minute call transcript read; a summary and next steps written	$104	$26
Contracts revieweda 40-page contract read against a checklist; a memo of issues written	$300	$75
Drafts writtena brief and one example read; a 600-word email or proposal section written	$44	$11

Worked out from each vendor’s list price and a fixed size for each job. A product built on a model charges its own price on top. See what every model costs for the same jobs.

Choose Claude Fable 5.2 for

Financial and technical analysis with no room for error
Multi-step research
Work Claude Opus 5.5 gets wrong

The strongest model on the board for problems the others get wrong: first on every independent test read, at twice the list price of Claude Opus 5.5.

Caveats: Anthropic's own advice is to start with Opus 5.5 and move up only when its answers fall short. It writes more per answer: Artificial Analysis's test run cost $26.54 per task at the top effort setting against $10.04 for Opus 5.5, a wider gap than the list prices suggest. On Claude Team it is offered on premium seats, up to half the weekly usage limit; Enterprise bills usage at API rates, per Anthropic's pricing page. Mythos 5.2 is the same model without the cyber and biology safeguards, open only through Anthropic's verification programs. It ranks third, not first, because price is 30% of the score and this is the second most expensive model here; on independent test results alone it is first.

Choose Claude Sonnet 5.5 for

Support replies at volume
Drafting proposals and reports
Summarising meetings and long documents
Answering questions from company documents

A sound everyday default: 55 on Artificial Analysis's index, four points behind Claude Opus 5.5, at half its list price.

Caveats: The saving depends on the effort setting: at the top setting Artificial Analysis's test run cost $10.02 per task, level with Opus 5.5 ($10.04). On Scale's Humanity's Last Exam, a set of expert-level questions, it scores 37.5 against 55.0 for Opus 5.5: move up for the hardest analysis. In Microsoft 365 Copilot, Claude models are on by default for most commercial customers but off in the EU, EFTA and UK until an administrator allows Anthropic as a subprocessor (a company permitted to handle your data), per Microsoft Learn. In Microsoft 365 Copilot it has been rolling out in phases across Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Chat since 30 September, with usage limits Microsoft has not published, per Microsoft's post of that date, which names Sonnet 5.5.

What people running them say

Claude Fable 5.2: One Hacker News (developer forum) launch thread, read through Signals: a commenter who tried it says it pulls ahead of Opus 5.5 only on very ambitious requests, another says Opus 5.5 at a high effort setting was enough for a software project of 125,000 lines, and a third asks how anyone measures the difference at the price. Too little to score.

Claude Sonnet 5.5: Less discussed than Opus or Haiku because it just works; the news was October's price cut for text it has already been sent once and reads again, to $0.10 per million tokens (the unit vendors bill by).

Questions people ask

Which is better, Claude Fable 5.2 or Claude Sonnet 5.5?

When should I choose Claude Fable 5.2 over Claude Sonnet 5.5?

Choose Claude Fable 5.2 for financial and technical analysis with no room for error, multi-step research, work claude opus 5.5 gets wrong. The strongest model on the board for problems the others get wrong: first on every independent test read, at twice the list price of Claude Opus 5.5.

When should I choose Claude Sonnet 5.5 over Claude Fable 5.2?

Choose Claude Sonnet 5.5 for support replies at volume, drafting proposals and reports, summarising meetings and long documents, answering questions from company documents. A sound everyday default: 55 on Artificial Analysis's index, four points behind Claude Opus 5.5, at half its list price.

Which is cheaper, Claude Fable 5.2 or Claude Sonnet 5.5?

Claude Fable 5.2 costs $8 per million tokens it reads (input) and $40 per million tokens it writes (output) on Anthropic's list price (Claude pricing, read Nov 12, 2026). A token is about three-quarters of a word. Claude Sonnet 5.5 costs $2 per million tokens it reads (input) and $10 per million tokens it writes (output) on Anthropic's list price (Claude pricing, read Nov 12, 2026). A token is about three-quarters of a word.

What do 1,000 jobs cost on Claude Fable 5.2 and Claude Sonnet 5.5?

At list price: 1,000 support replies cost $40 on Claude Fable 5.2 and $10 on Claude Sonnet 5.5; 1,000 documents processed cost $28 on Claude Fable 5.2 and $7 on Claude Sonnet 5.5; 1,000 calls summarised cost $104 on Claude Fable 5.2 and $26 on Claude Sonnet 5.5; 1,000 contracts reviewed cost $300 on Claude Fable 5.2 and $75 on Claude Sonnet 5.5; 1,000 drafts written cost $44 on Claude Fable 5.2 and $11 on Claude Sonnet 5.5. A product built on either model charges its own price on top.

Scores come from the Models at Work leaderboard: Score is 0 to 100 and computed, not typed. 40% is independent testing (Artificial Analysis, Arena, Scale, Epoch, Vals and others; each test is scaled against the best score on this board, and tests of real work, such as finished freelance projects or professional tasks, count double the exams). 30% is price: the vendor's list price for a typical mix of reading and writing, on a fixed scale from $0.05 to $60 per million tokens, so a model that costs a fifth as much gains real ground. 15% is what people report after running it, from Signals and linked threads. 15% is fit: how much text it can take in at once and where a business can get it (the products and clouds that carry it), with a small credit for open weights. A missing component drops out and the rest are reweighted. A model with no independent test yet is provisional and ranks below every measured one. Within three points is a tie. Vendor-published figures are labelled and never counted. Prices are vendor list prices where published; a typical mix assumes three parts reading to one part writing.