Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Claude Opus 5.5
Claude Haiku 5.5 and Claude Opus 5.5 are within three points on the Models at Work leaderboard, which we treat as a tie (73 vs 70 out of 100). On independent tests alone, Claude Opus 5.5 is ahead (83 vs 55). Claude Haiku 5.5 is cheaper: 1,000 support replies cost about $0.50 at list price, against $20 on Claude Opus 5.5, which is 40 times as much. On the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, one of the independent tests, Claude Opus 5.5 leads 59 to 36.
| Claude Haiku 5.5 · Anthropic | Claude Opus 5.5 · Anthropic | |
|---|---|---|
| Leaderboard rank | #2 | #5 |
| Score (0–100) | 73 | 70 |
| Kind of work | High-volume work | Hardest problems |
| Price per 1M tokens | $0.10 to read · $0.50 to write | $4 to read · $20 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, GitHub Copilot | 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 | 36 | 59 |
| Arena text score | Not measured | 1507 |
| Humanity's Last Exam, Diamond (Scale) | Not measured | 55.00 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | Not measured | 167 |
| Humanity's Sixth Sense (Scale) | Not measured | 44.60 |
| Best for | Sorting and routing tickets, Pulling fields out of invoices, First-pass support replies, Tagging and classifying records at volume | Long reports and analysis, Reading long contracts, Multi-step research, Work a cheaper model gets wrong |
Cost of 1,000 jobs
| 1,000 of these | Claude Haiku 5.5 | Claude Opus 5.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Support repliesthe customer message, the account notes and two help articles read; a 300-word reply written | $0.50 | $20 |
| Documents processeda two-page invoice or form read; the fields pulled out | $0.35 | $14 |
| Calls summariseda 40-minute call transcript read; a summary and next steps written | $1.30 | $52 |
| Contracts revieweda 40-page contract read against a checklist; a memo of issues written | $3.75 | $150 |
| Drafts writtena brief and one example read; a 600-word email or proposal section written | $0.55 | $22 |
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 Haiku 5.5 for
- Sorting and routing tickets
- Pulling fields out of invoices
- First-pass support replies
- Tagging and classifying records at volume
The pick for high-volume routine work: a twentieth of Claude Sonnet 5.5's list price, with users reporting near-perfect sorting in production, as long as each request stays short.
Caveats: The price is five times higher on any request that feeds it more than 100,000 tokens of text at once (a long document or a long back-and-forth). It scores 36 on Artificial Analysis's index against 55 for Sonnet 5.5: keep it off work that needs judgement. It ranks 2nd because price is 30% of the board's score and this is one of the two cheapest models here, not because of its test results.
Choose Claude Opus 5.5 for
- Long reports and analysis
- Reading long contracts
- Multi-step research
- Work a cheaper model gets wrong
The safer buy for hard work: six points behind Claude Fable 5.2 on Artificial Analysis's index (59 against 65) at half its list price, and the model Anthropic says to start with.
Caveats: Twice the list price of Claude Sonnet 5.5; test your own work on Sonnet before paying for this one. On Arena, where people vote blind between two models' answers, Gemini 4 Argon is ahead, but the gap is within the margin of error. In Microsoft 365 Copilot, Claude models are off by default in the EU, EFTA and UK until an administrator allows Anthropic as a subprocessor (a company permitted to handle your data), per Microsoft.
What people running them say
Claude Haiku 5.5: A Hacker News (developer forum) thread on it passed a thousand upvotes in a day. The recurring reports are that it sorts items into fixed categories almost without error in live use and is 'noticeably smarter than GPT-6 Luna'; the recurring complaint is the higher price on requests over 100,000 tokens (the unit vendors bill by).
Claude Opus 5.5: Its launch thread was the year's biggest about a Claude model on Hacker News, a developer forum. One project there credited the model with rewriting a large piece of programming software (the TypeScript compiler) in another programming language, Rust, to a working state in ten hours, and a Vals AI materials-discovery run used it to run simulations on its own. The most-upvoted doubt is a tracker asking whether the model has been quietly made worse since launch.
Questions people ask
Which is better, Claude Haiku 5.5 or Claude Opus 5.5?
Claude Haiku 5.5 and Claude Opus 5.5 are within three points on the Models at Work leaderboard, which we treat as a tie (73 vs 70 out of 100). On independent tests alone, Claude Opus 5.5 is ahead (83 vs 55). Claude Haiku 5.5 is cheaper: 1,000 support replies cost about $0.50 at list price, against $20 on Claude Opus 5.5, which is 40 times as much. On the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, one of the independent tests, Claude Opus 5.5 leads 59 to 36.
When should I choose Claude Haiku 5.5 over Claude Opus 5.5?
Choose Claude Haiku 5.5 for sorting and routing tickets, pulling fields out of invoices, first-pass support replies, tagging and classifying records at volume. The pick for high-volume routine work: a twentieth of Claude Sonnet 5.5's list price, with users reporting near-perfect sorting in production, as long as each request stays short.
When should I choose Claude Opus 5.5 over Claude Haiku 5.5?
Choose Claude Opus 5.5 for long reports and analysis, reading long contracts, multi-step research, work a cheaper model gets wrong. The safer buy for hard work: six points behind Claude Fable 5.2 on Artificial Analysis's index (59 against 65) at half its list price, and the model Anthropic says to start with.
Which is cheaper, Claude Haiku 5.5 or Claude Opus 5.5?
Claude Haiku 5.5 costs $0.10 per million tokens it reads (input) and $0.50 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 Opus 5.5 costs $4 per million tokens it reads (input) and $20 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 Haiku 5.5 and Claude Opus 5.5?
At list price: 1,000 support replies cost $0.50 on Claude Haiku 5.5 and $20 on Claude Opus 5.5; 1,000 documents processed cost $0.35 on Claude Haiku 5.5 and $14 on Claude Opus 5.5; 1,000 calls summarised cost $1.30 on Claude Haiku 5.5 and $52 on Claude Opus 5.5; 1,000 contracts reviewed cost $3.75 on Claude Haiku 5.5 and $150 on Claude Opus 5.5; 1,000 drafts written cost $0.55 on Claude Haiku 5.5 and $22 on Claude Opus 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.