Claude Opus 5.5 Intelligence, Performance and Price Analysis (Max)

This is the page for the "max" reasoning setting. The page for xhigh is https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/claude-opus-5-5-xhigh and the page for medium (the default setting) is https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/claude-opus-5-5-medium

I've failed twice to get "Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle" to work with max, because in both cases it ran out of the 128,000 token budget while it was still reasoning about the problem.

I'm suspicious that "max" may be virtually useless if it's that easy to have it overthink to the point that it doesn't get to a response.

Transcript for one attempt here - expand the "Reasoning trace" bit to see it: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht...

Do these evaluations get re run a few weeks after launch? I started doing that yesterday for our internal dataset and found Sol’s performance had regressed to be equal to Luna’s. Granted this was one run, but something I’m becoming more concerned about, the model providers want to quickly prove they’re the best, people switch to them, then they pull the rug.

Half the cost per task compared to Opus 5, comparing high effort to high effort. That's just really nice.

Edit: https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/claude-opus-5-5?models=...

Fingers are crossed on this one. I had gone back to using opus 4.8 instead of using opus 5. Simply because 4.8 is much better at remembering what it's doing and following instructions than 5. 5 often had a tendency to get halfway through solving a problem and then I would have to stop it in the middle, because it had lost its way and was going off on a tangent rather than dealing with the problem. In that respect, 4.8 was a lot more stable.

"High" to me looks like the one to use. https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/claude-opus-5-5-high

Many benchmarks start to plateau after high, this benchmarks better than Fable, and my initial tests show it working really well.

"somewhat expensive when comparing to other models of similar price"?

That says something about your selected range, and nothing about the model.

> somewhat expensive when comparing to other models of similar price

-_-‘

Fingers crossed on this one. I had gone back to 4.8, because 5 was not very good at following instructions or remembering instructions. I found myself repeating quite often what I wanted and what I was trying to do. Opus 5 was more like haiku than it was 4.8 in that respect.

Interesting to see it now. I've used it a bunch before it came out and i pretty much didn't notice it. It might have been slightly better code quality, but still not great in that. I guess it just was slightly less frustrating to work with, but still AI...

Definitely a quiet release. Perhaps pre-empting marketing for Astra public release?

I am begging you on my knees to please stop posting this cringe.

The model is just out. It could be good, great even, I don't know. But I do know that this index has Opus 5, one of the worst releases of 26, ahead of Astra. What information are we supposed to deduce from number having gone up?

so its more intelligence than fable?

can anyone help me?

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China who?