Claude 5.5: top scores at a lower price
Models
Anthropic’s new Opus 5.5 leads two public leaderboards and costs less to run than the model it replaces.
What happened
- On September 22, Anthropic released Claude Opus 5.5, the first of its 5.5 family. The list price is $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens. Anthropic says it costs about 40% less to run than Opus 5.
- Sonnet 5.5 (late September) and Haiku 5.5 (October 7), the faster and cheaper members, followed.
- As of October 15: Opus 5.5 is first on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (58), third on the Arena text board, and first on Terminal-Bench 4.0 (64.8%, run in Claude Code). Sonnet 5.5 is second on Terminal-Bench (61.8%).
Why it matters for you
Top quality got cheaper. For coding and long tasks, the Claude 5.5 models are the ones to try first right now; for large volumes of simple work, the small models (Haiku) cost a fraction. See the model watch.
Sources
- Anthropic launches Claude Opus 5.5, ForkLog, September 2026.
- Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, Artificial Analysis, read October 15, 2026.
- Terminal-Bench 4.0 leaderboard, Terminal-Bench, read October 15, 2026.
Notes for learning. Nothing here is investment advice. All news