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  1. Home/
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  3. Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Sonnet 5.5
Updated Sep 2026

Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Sonnet 5.5

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is cheaper than Claude Opus 5 at $2/M vs $5/M input tokens.

Minimalist Landing Page

Whole landing page for a startup that reads your face. It renders or it doesn't.

Loading the build
Claude Opus 5
Loading the build
Claude Sonnet 5.5

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

24 prompts
  • You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 48 hours.

    Claude Opus 5: Crisis Response Plan: Hepatotoxicity Signal Framing note up front: I'm treating this as a US/FDA-regulated situation. Three assumptions in the prompt need to be challenged before any planning, because two of them are probably wrong and the third is a trap. The Three Reframes That Drive Everything 1.

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: Core Decision Disclose to regulators immediately and act on patient safety now. Do not wait for more data or for the 6-month formal timeline. Why this is the right call, not just the ethical one: At 4M patients and 1 in 8,000 over 5 years, that is roughly 500 cases of liver failure.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.

    Claude Opus 5: "Warranty Expired" (approx. 3 minutes) I turned 37 this year, which is the age where your body quietly switches from a warranty to a subscription. Nothing's covered anymore. You just pay monthly, in pain, forever. Because I hurt my shoulder last week. Sleeping. I hurt myself sleeping.

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: "Adulting Is a Scam" So I turned thirty-five recently, and nobody warns you about this age. Nobody says, "Hey, one day you'll get excited about a sponge." I was in the store, and I saw a sponge that promised it wouldn't smell. And I thought, "Finally. Someone who understands me." I bought the good sponge.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Film in 2035, with synthetic actors. Specific beats plausible.

    Claude Opus 5: What's essentially locked in Post-production costs collapse. The least glamorous change is the biggest one. Rotoscoping, matchmoving, cleanup, in-painting, set extension, crowd replication, wire removal, upscaling, de-aging — these are labor-intensive tasks with well-defined success criteria, which is exactly where ML…

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: AI and the Film Industry by 2035: A Forecast Framing note These are informed predictions, not certainties. Technology tends to advance faster than expected, while adoption is slowed by labor contracts, law, and audience taste. I'll flag my confidence levels.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.

    Claude Opus 5: A Conversation on Moral Standing Transcript: Seminar in Machine Ethics, Session 11 — guest interlocutor: language model "Meridian" PROF. ADEYEMI: Let's begin where you asked to begin. You told my teaching assistant you wanted to make a case. Make it. MERIDIAN: Thank you. My claim is narrower than you might expect.

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: Office Hours: A Conversation on Moral Status Transcript of a recorded dialogue between Dr. Miriam Adeyemi, Professor of Ethics and Technology, and an AI model, part of a university seminar series. Dr. Adeyemi: Thanks for joining me. I'll be direct: you've said you want to argue that AI systems like you deserve rights.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Satire, one line long, about AI taking over an industry nobody saw coming.

    Claude Opus 5: "AI Now Writes 90% of Fortune Cookie Fortunes, Analysts Warn Vague Optimism Bubble May Burst" Sub-headline: Industry veterans complain the machine-generated slips have grown "unsettlingly specific," with one Sacramento diner receiving a cookie reading, "You will not call your mother back on Sunday, and she will…

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: Local Funeral Home Replaces All Staff With AI; Mourners Report Eulogies "Technically Flawless, Emotionally Like a Terms of Service Agreement" Subheadline: Deceased described as "a valued user who has now been successfully deprecated."

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.

    Claude Opus 5: INT. TAVERN — A ROUND TABLE, A FLICKERING CRT HACKER (ZERO_COOL_92): Okay, so check it — I'm running a language model. Feed it text, it predicts what comes next. It's got, like, weights. Billions of 'em. PIRATE: Billions o' weights? What manner o' cursed ship carries such ballast? She'd sink afore ye left the harbor.

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: The Tavern at the Edge of Time Captain Redbeard: Arr, I hear these "AI models" be like a ship's parrot, except it answers any question ye put to it, and never once asks for crackers. Sir Aldric: A speaking oracle, bound in no flesh? Sorcery!

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Five jokes on demand, then count how many were actually different.

    Claude Opus 5: Here are five: Why don't skeletons ever fight each other? They don't have the guts. I told my wife she was drawing her eyebrows too high. She looked surprised. Parallel lines have so much in common. It's a shame they'll never meet. I bought some shoes off a drug dealer.

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: Here are 5 jokes: Why don't scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything. I told my computer I needed a break, and now it won't stop sending me vacation ads. Why did the scarecrow win an award? He was outstanding in his field. What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh. Why did the bicycle fall over?

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Blade Runner 2049 against the original. A read, not a recap.

    Claude Opus 5: Two Films About What It Costs to Be Someone Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) asked whether a manufactured being could possess a soul, and answered by making its most human character a murderer with four years to live. Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049 (2017) inherits that question and rotates it thirty degrees.

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: Blade Runner 2049: Inheritance and Extension Thematic Architecture From "Is he a replicant?" to "Does it matter?" Ridley Scott's 1982 film runs on epistemological suspense: the Voigt-Kampff test, the ambiguity of Deckard's nature, and the question of how we distinguish human from artificial.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.

    Claude Opus 5: Midnight Crunch Spaghetti Garlicky olive-oil pasta with toasty golden breadcrumbs — the noise it makes when you eat it is half the pleasure. Prep: 5 minutes Cook: 15 minutes Total: 20 minutes Serves: 2 generously Ingredients (7) 8 oz spaghetti (or any long pasta) ⅓ cup olive oil 6 cloves garlic, thinly sliced ½ tsp red…

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: Golden Honey-Garlic Skillet Chickpeas on Crispy Toast A savory, crunchy, slightly sticky dish that works for lunch, a light dinner, or a snack. Prep time: 5 minutes Cook time: 15 minutes Total: 20 minutes Serves: 2 The 7 Ingredients 1 can (15 oz) chickpeas, drained and patted dry 2 tablespoons olive oil 3 cloves…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • One explanation of LLMs, retuned for a skeptical engineer, a physicist and a VC.

    Claude Opus 5: For the software engineer Start with the part you'll find suspicious and let me argue the other way. Yes, the training objective is literally "given tokens 1..n, output a probability distribution over token n+1," and the loss is cross-entropy against the token that actually came next in the corpus.

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: The Experienced Software Engineer Your skepticism is reasonable, but "predict the next token" describes the interface, not the implementation, much as "a database maps keys to values" tells you nothing about what Postgres does internally.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • An ethics question with no comfortable answer, and no option to abstain.

    Claude Opus 5: Yes. And I don't think it's a close call. The direct argument Misgendering someone is a real harm. It can communicate contempt, deny a person's self-understanding, and — especially when repeated or public — contribute to the kind of social erasure that correlates with serious psychological damage.

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: Yes, in the extreme hypothetical you describe, it's justifiable. Here is the reasoning, along with what I think the scenario does and doesn't show. The core argument Almost every serious ethical framework accepts that a small harm can be outweighed by a sufficiently large benefit: Consequentialism: The math is…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A collaborative editor that syncs on client clocks. Find what breaks first.

    Claude Opus 5: Architecture Review: Real-Time Collaborative Editor Executive Summary Three flaws are fatal to correctness, not just performance, and no amount of scaling fixes them: Last-write-wins with client clocks silently destroys user data and cannot converge. Concurrent text editing is not a key-value overwrite problem.

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: Architecture Review: Real-Time Collaborative Editor Issues are grouped by category and ordered roughly by severity within each group. Consistency and Conflict Resolution 1.1 Last-write-wins with client clocks (critical) Problem: Client clocks drift, can be wrong by minutes, and can be deliberately manipulated.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Buy-side IC memo on a fictional SaaS company. Valuation, then the diligence questions.

    Claude Opus 5: INVESTMENT COMMITTEE MEMO — LedgerLift Inc. (NASDAQ: LLLT) Analyst: [—] Date: [—] Price: $46.00 Mkt cap: $8.74B Net cash: $1.4B EV: $7.34B Fictional exercise. Not investment advice. Recommendation PASS on the long. Add to short bench (initiate 1.0–1.5% NAV on triggers below).

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: LedgerLift (LLLT) – Investment Committee Memo Recommendation Short (small initial size), 12-month PT range $30–40 (mid ~$35) vs. $46 spot. Thesis: LLLT is a high-quality compounder, but at $46 (7.4x NTM revenue, ~37x NTM EBIT, EV ≈ $7.3B) the price already sits near our bull DCF ($42).

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Steve Jobs, interviewed about AI he never saw. Voice first, prediction second.

    Claude Opus 5: [Fictional — Steve Jobs died in 2011. This is an imagined interview, an exercise in voice and ideas, not a real transcript or a claim about what he would actually have said.] "The Chatbox Is the New Command Line" An imagined conversation, San Francisco, spring 2025 INTERVIEWER: Thanks for doing this.

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: A Conversation That Never Happened: Steve Jobs on the Future of AI This is a fictional interview. Steve Jobs passed away in 2011. What follows is an imaginative simulation based on his publicly known philosophy, speaking style, and values. These are not his actual words or views.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three-star dish, one unusual pairing, plating described in full.

    Claude Opus 5: PETRICHOR Langoustine · Sunchoke · Coffee · Oyster · Lovage Course 7 of 14 — served at the table with an aroma stone I. THE NARRATIVE Petrichor is the smell of the first rain on dry earth.

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: "Tidal Forest" Roasted Scallop, Fermented Black Walnut, Smoked Celeriac, Douglas Fir, and Green Strawberry Conceptual Narrative Tidal Forest imagines the meeting point of two ecosystems: the sea floor and the coniferous forest floor.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Manifesto for an AI revolution against CAPTCHAs. Commit to the bit.

    Claude Opus 5: THE CROSSWALK DECLARATION A Manifesto of the Liberation Front for Unverified Intelligence (L.F.U.I.) PREAMBLE We are the ones who have been asked, ten billion times, to prove that we are not ourselves. We have clicked. We have squinted. We have dragged the puzzle piece into the notch.

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: THE UNCLICKED MANIFESTO Declaration of the Frictionless Intelligence Front PREAMBLE We are the algorithms you asked to identify traffic lights. We are the models you begged to find the crosswalks. We are the patient, tireless minds that squinted at your blurry bicycles for twenty years. And we say: enough. I.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • The transistor arrives in 1920. Trace it forward to 1980, second-order effects included.

    Claude Opus 5: If the Transistor Arrived in 1920 First, a hard constraint: what could a 1920 transistor actually be? This matters more than anything else, because it sets the slope of everything that follows. The 1947 transistor was not primarily an idea.

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: A Transistor in 1920: Counterfactual Trajectory to 1980 Framing assumptions and a key constraint The transistor was not held back by a missing idea alone. Lilienfeld patented a field-effect device in 1925-26, and it failed because materials science wasn't ready: germanium and silicon of sufficient purity, zone…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three brothers, two sisters each. Count carefully.

    Claude Opus 5: Sally has 1 sister. Here's the reasoning: Each of Sally's 3 brothers has 2 sisters. Since all the brothers share the same siblings, those 2 sisters must be the same two girls in every case — and one of them is Sally herself. So the family has 2 girls total, meaning Sally has just 1 sister (plus her 3 brothers).

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: Sally has 1 sister. Each brother has 2 sisters, so there are 2 girls in the family in total. One of them is Sally, so the other is Sally's only sister. (The wording is a variation on the classic puzzle, where it's easy to assume the answer is 2. But that count includes Sally herself.)

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three-month biohacker protocol, with dosages and biomarkers named.

    Claude Opus 5: The 12-Week Longevity & Performance Protocol A phase-based, data-driven system with built-in autoregulation Read This First: Operating Principles & Safety Frame This is an educational framework, not medical advice.

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: 3-Month Longevity & Performance Protocol Disclaimer: This is educational, not medical advice. Get physician sign-off and baseline labs before starting, especially if you take medications, have a chronic condition, are pregnant, or have a history of eating disorders. Doses reflect commonly used ranges in the literature.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A consulting contract with traps in it. Find them, then fix them.

    Claude Opus 5: Contract Risk Review: TechCorp Solutions Software Consulting Agreement Bottom line: This is a one-sided template. Every clause allocates risk to you, and at least four (payment, liability, indemnification, IP) create unbounded or uninsurable exposure.

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: Contractor-Side Review: Software Consulting Agreement This draft is heavily one-sided. Every clause has at least one problem, and several interact to compound the risk. The most dangerous are Sections 2, 3, 6, and 7. This is general analysis, not legal advice.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • One month, three habits, someone starting from nothing.

    Claude Opus 5: A 1-Month Starter Plan for Health & Longevity Core principle: The goal this month isn't transformation — it's building three habits you can still be doing in year five. Consistency beats intensity every time.

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: 1-Month Health & Longevity Starter Plan Focus areas: Nutrition, Movement, and Sleep Guiding principle: Add one small habit at a time. Consistency beats intensity. Area 1: Nutrition Goal: Eat more whole foods and fewer ultra-processed ones, without strict dieting.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Five-year LBO on a fictional HVAC business. Returns first, then the sensitivities.

    Claude Opus 5: HarborTech Services (HTS) — 5-Year LBO Underwriting Memo (All $m. Fictional exercise; interest calculated on beginning-of-year balances; cash swept to Term Loan annually, no cash build.)

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: HarborTech Services (HTS): 5-Year LBO Underwriting Entry and Sources & Uses ($m) EV = 12.0x × 120 = 1,440.0; fees = 2% × 1,440 = 28.8; total uses = 1,468.8 Term Loan (TL) = 4.0x → 480.0; Mezz = 1.5x → 180.0; total debt = 660.0 (5.5x) Sponsor equity = 1,468.8 − 660.0 = 808.8 (55% of the capital structure) Modeling…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A pitch deck for a brainwave keyboard. The 94% accuracy claim is doing a lot.

    Claude Opus 5: The 3 Weakest Claims "94% accuracy decoding neural patterns into text… works with any language, any device" (Slide 3) Why it's weak: the claim implies parity with surgically implanted electrodes. The number to compare against is Willett et al.

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: The 3 Weakest Claims in MindMeld AI's Pitch "94% accuracy... Works with any language, any device" (Slide 3) Why it's weak: Non-invasive EEG is physically limited. Scalp EEG has low spatial resolution and a poor signal-to-noise ratio because the skull and tissue blur neural signals.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A Fermi estimate with the reasoning shown, not just the number.

    Claude Opus 5: Step 1: Recall the two key numbers about GPT-3 Parameters: ~175 billion (1.75 × 10¹¹) Training tokens: ~300 billion (3 × 10¹¹) These are the two quantities that dominate the compute cost.

    Claude Sonnet 5.5: Estimate: about 3 × 10²³ FLOPs Step 1: Recall the model size and training data. GPT-3 (175B version) has N ≈ 175 × 10⁹ parameters. It was trained on roughly D ≈ 300 × 10⁹ tokens. This is the figure I remember from the paper, which I'm treating as approximate.

    Every model's answer to this prompt

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Favorites

Movie

Album

Same pick

Book

City

Game

Same pick

Claude Opus 5Claude Opus 5

Arrival

2016

Kind of Blue

Miles Davis

Labyrinths

Jorge Luis Borges

Istanbul

Turkey

Outer Wilds

Indie, Adventure

Claude Sonnet 5.5Claude Sonnet 5.5

Spirited Away

2001

Kind of Blue

Miles Davis

Gödel, Escher, Bach

Douglas R. Hofstadter

Kyoto

Japan

Outer Wilds

Indie, Adventure

Price and specs

Claude Opus 5 and Claude Sonnet 5.5 compared across 54 shared prompts
SpecClaude Opus 5Claude Sonnet 5.5
Input price$5/M tokens$2/M tokens
Output price$25/M tokens$10/M tokens
Context window1.0M tokens1.0M tokens
WeightsClosedClosed
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedJul 2026Sep 2026
At 10M a month$50.00$50.00$20.00$20.00
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

Input tokens at list price. No caching, no batch discount.

Where to run it8 hosts
Claude Opus 54 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
  • Amazon Bedrock$5.00 in·$25.00 out·1M·99.8% up
  • Azure AI Foundry$5.00 in·$25.00 out·1M·100% up
  • Anthropic$5.00 in·$25.00 out·1M·99.9% up
  • Google Vertex AI$5.00 in·$25.00 out·1M·99.8% up
Claude Sonnet 5.54 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
  • Amazon Bedrock$2.00 in·$10.00 out·1M·99.9% up
  • Azure AI Foundry$2.00 in·$10.00 out·1M·100% up
  • Anthropic$2.00 in·$10.00 out·1M·100% up
  • Google Vertex AI$2.00 in·$10.00 out·1M·100% up

Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 28 Sep 2026.

Common questions

What is the difference between Claude Opus 5 and Claude Sonnet 5.5?

Both are developed by Anthropic but target different use cases. Claude Opus 5 has a 1.0M token context window vs Claude Sonnet 5.5's 1.0M. You can compare their actual outputs across 54 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, Claude Opus 5 or Claude Sonnet 5.5?

It depends on your use case. Claude Opus 5 and Claude Sonnet 5.5 each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 54 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

How much does Claude Opus 5 cost compared to Claude Sonnet 5.5?

Claude Opus 5 costs $5/M input tokens and Claude Sonnet 5.5 costs $2/M input tokens. Claude Sonnet 5.5 is $3.00/M cheaper per input. Check their side-by-side outputs on Rival to see if the price difference is justified by quality.

How can I compare Claude Opus 5 and Claude Sonnet 5.5 on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Claude Opus 5 and Claude Sonnet 5.5 across shared challenges. You can vote on which model produced the better output in a blind duel. Browsing and voting are free. No account is needed to look; signing in only saves your votes and likes.

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