Claude Fable 5.2 vs Claude Sonnet 5
Full profiles: Claude Fable 5.2 (Anthropic) and Claude Sonnet 5 (Anthropic): every benchmark, price and rank.
Updated · Data from 7 sources
As of 9 Nov 2026, Claude Fable 5.2 is ahead of Claude Sonnet 5 on quality (69.4 vs 59.2 on the BenchLeader Index), but Claude Sonnet 5 is 4.0× cheaper at $4.00 vs $16.00 per 1M tokens blended. Claude Fable 5.2 leads in every category we measure both in. Claude Sonnet 5 streams faster.
Key facts (as of 9 Nov 2026)
- Claude Fable 5.2 scores 69.4 on the BenchLeader Index and Claude Sonnet 5 scores 59.2 (BenchLeader, 9 Nov 2026).
- Claude Fable 5.2 costs $16.00 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 9 Nov 2026).
- Claude Sonnet 5 costs $4.00 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 9 Nov 2026).
- Claude Sonnet 5 streams faster than Claude Fable 5.2 (Artificial Analysis, 7-day median, 9 Nov 2026).
- Of the 7 benchmarks both models have, Claude Fable 5.2 leads 7 (BenchLeader, 9 Nov 2026).
Claude Fable 5.2 benchmarks max Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 benchmarks high AnthropicAdd a third modelWhich to pick for…
The pick's numbers come first. Category scores on the BenchLeader scale (50 is the average model, 15 points one standard deviation). High confidence means a lead of half a standard deviation or more; under one point is called either.
| Use case | Pick | Why | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | Claude Fable 5.2 | 80 vs 60 category score; SciCode (AA) 67.7% vs 54.3% | High |
| Reasoning | Claude Fable 5.2 | 78 vs 66 category score; Humanity's Last Exam (AA) 74.3% vs 35.7% | High |
| Long documents | Claude Fable 5.2 | 66 vs 63 category score; AA-LCR v1.1 83.3% vs 76.7% | Medium |
| Chat quality (human preference) | – | Only Claude Sonnet 5 has an Arena rating (65 category score) | Not comparable |
| Lowest cost | Claude Sonnet 5 | $4.00 vs $16.00 per 1M blended; agentic coding session $0.160 vs $0.640 | – |
| Fastest first answer | Claude Fable 5.2 | 3.0 s (Claude Fable 5.2 (max)) vs 15.6 s (Claude Sonnet 5 (high)) to the first answer token | – |
| High volume on a budget | Neither flagship | A smaller model is usually the better fit: Cheapest good LLMs, Fastest LLMs | – |
Key differences
- Claude Fable 5.2 (max) leads on quality: 69.4 vs 59.2.
- Claude Fable 5.2 (max) is stronger in coding, knowledge, long context, reasoning.
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high) is stronger in agents & tools, human preference, maths, multimodal.
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high) is 4.0× cheaper ($4.00 vs $16.00 per 1M blended).
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high) streams 1.5× faster (105 vs 72 tokens per second).
At a glance
| Spec | Claude Fable 5.2 | Claude Sonnet 5 |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Released | 9 Nov 2026 | 30 Jun 2026 |
| Context window (tokens) | 1,000,000 | 1,000,000 |
| Compared at | Claude Fable 5.2 (max) | Claude Sonnet 5 (high) |
| Open weights | No | No |
| Price in / out / cached input per 1M | $8.00 / $40.00 / $0.200 | $2.00 / $10.00 / $0.200 |
Category by category
Category scores on the BenchLeader scale: 50 is the average evaluated model, 15 points is one standard deviation. A gap under one point is called level.
| Category | Claude Fable 5.2 (max) | Claude Sonnet 5 (high) | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reasoning | 78.4 | 65.5 | Claude Fable 5.2 |
| Coding | 80.2 | 60.4 | Claude Fable 5.2 |
| Agents & tools | – | 54.3 | not comparable |
| Maths | – | 65.3 | not comparable |
| Knowledge | 81.7 | – | not comparable |
| Human preference | – | 64.7 | not comparable |
| Multimodal | – | 60.9 | not comparable |
| Long context | 66.4 | 62.9 | Claude Fable 5.2 |
On one chart
Each domain on the index's own scale, where 50 is an average model. Click a domain to see the benchmarks behind it. Pick up to 5 models from the list.
Not drawn, measured for fewer than two of these models: Agents & tools, Maths, Knowledge, Instruction following, Multimodal, Human preference.
Where sources disagree
Across the 7 benchmarks both have, Claude Fable 5.2 leads 7, Claude Sonnet 5 leads 0. Every overall index that rates both puts Claude Fable 5.2 ahead.
| Overall index | Claude Fable 5.2 (max) | Claude Sonnet 5 (high) | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 69.4 | 59.2 | Claude Fable 5.2 |
Each publisher runs its own tasks, harnesses and effort settings, so their overall verdicts can differ; BenchLeader reconciles them on one scale. † measured at another effort setting of the same model (the publisher did not test the one compared here).
Price, speed and latency
List prices blended at three input tokens per output token. Per-task prices use the token counts on the methodology page. Cost, tokens and time per benchmark task are measured: Artificial Analysis’ averages over its whole Intelligence Index run.
| Measure | Claude Fable 5.2 (max) | Claude Sonnet 5 (high) |
|---|---|---|
| Blended price per 1M tokens | $16.00 | $4.00 |
| Input / output per 1M | $8.00 / $40.00 | $2.00 / $10.00 |
| Cached input per 1M | $0.200 | $0.200 |
| Price per task: chat reply | $0.015 | $0.0038 |
| Price per task: summarize a 30-page report | $0.120 | $0.030 |
| Price per task: code edit | $0.108 | $0.027 |
| Price per task: agentic coding session | $0.640 | $0.160 |
| Price per task: structured extraction | $0.024 | $0.0060 |
| Agentic coding session, input mostly cached | $0.289 | $0.079 |
| Cost per benchmark task (AA Index) | $26.54 | – |
| Output tokens per task (AA Index) | 274k | – |
| Of which reasoning | 193k | – |
| Output speed | 72 tok/s | 105 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 3.0 s | 15.6 s |
| Time to a complete answer | – | 48.9 s |
Each model is compared at its best-ranked reasoning-effort setting. Claude Fable 5.2 (max) scores 69.4 and takes 3 s to its first answer token; Claude Fable 5.2 (high) scores 68.9 in 3 s, Claude Fable 5.2 (xhigh) scores 68.7 in 3 s. Claude Sonnet 5 (high) scores 59.2 and takes 16 s to its first answer token; Claude Sonnet 5 scores 56.0 in 2 s, Claude Sonnet 5 (xhigh) scores 55.5 in 25 s. Higher effort means more thinking before the answer: better scores, longer waits and more tokens billed. How reasoning effort changes scores and cost.
Every benchmark
135 benchmarks, grouped by category; each name links to the board and its leaders. † measured at another effort setting of the same model, shown for reference and not counted as a win.
| Metric | Publisher | Claude Fable 5.2 (max) | Claude Sonnet 5 (high) |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | BenchLeader | 69.4 | 59.2 |
| Coding score | BenchLeader | 80.2 | 60.4 |
| Knowledge score | BenchLeader | 81.7 | – |
| Long context score | BenchLeader | 66.4 | 62.9 |
| Reasoning score | BenchLeader | 78.4 | 65.5 |
| Agents & tools score | BenchLeader | – | 54.3 |
| Human preference score | BenchLeader | – | 64.7 |
| Maths score | BenchLeader | – | 65.3 |
| Multimodal score | BenchLeader | – | 60.9 |
| Blended price $/M | BenchLeader | $16.00 | $4.00 |
| Output speed | BenchLeader | 72 tok/s | 105 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | BenchLeader | 3.0 s | 15.6 s |
| Context window | BenchLeader | 1,000,000 tokens | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Reasoning | |||
| GPQA Diamond | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 90.5%† |
| SimpleBench | SimpleBench | – | 60.6%† |
| Arena Hard Prompts | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1490 |
| LiveBench 2.0 Reasoning | LiveBench | 88.8%† | – |
| LiveBench 1.0 Reasoning | LiveBench | – | 88.7%† |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 91.1%† |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 74.3% | 35.7% |
| HLE-Diamond (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 80.2% | – |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Vals AI | – | 88.9%† |
| ARC-AGI-1 | ARC Prize | 97.5% | – |
| ARC-AGI-2 | ARC Prize | 92.5% | – |
| ARC-AGI-3 | ARC Prize | 94.9% | – |
| CritPt | Artificial Analysis | 35.4% | 15.1% |
| CritPt v2 hard subset (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 76.5% | – |
| MysteryMechanism | Vals AI | 51.8%† | – |
| Chess Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 34.0%† |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 16.0%† |
| LMCA | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 50.0% |
| DTBench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 84.5% |
| ForecastBench | ForecastBench | – | 63.5%† |
| BTF-3 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 14.2%† |
| Coding | |||
| SciCode | SciCode | – | 54.3% |
| WeirdML | WeirdML | – | 68.8% |
| FrontierCode | Cognition | – | 42.7%† |
| GSO-Bench | GSO-Bench | – | 37.3%† |
Show all 135 benchmarks
| Metric | Publisher | Claude Fable 5.2 (max) | Claude Sonnet 5 (high) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | |||
| Arena Coding | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1520 |
| Arena WebDev | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1539 |
| LiveBench 2.0 Coding | LiveBench | 79.2%† | – |
| LiveBench 1.0 Coding | LiveBench | – | 80.7%† |
| SciCode (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 67.7% | 54.3% |
| LiveCodeBench | Vals AI | – | 82.4%† |
| IOI | Vals AI | – | 45.0%† |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | Vals AI | – | 79.6%† |
| Code Migration | Vals AI | – | 44.4%† |
| Code Migration v1.1 | Vals AI | 83.3%† | – |
| ProgramBench | Vals AI | 19.0%† | 0.0%† |
| SWE-bench Multimodal | Vals AI | 62.3%† | – |
| Vibe Code Bench 1-100 | Vals AI | – | 13.8%† |
| Vibe Code Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | 93.8%† | 81.3%† |
| Surface Evolver Bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 60.0%† |
| DeepSWE v1.1 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 48.2% |
| CursorBench | Cursor | – | 30.8% |
| ALE-Bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 1463.1 |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 59.6% | 5.0% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 80.5%† |
| Startrise Frontend | Startrise | – | 66.6%† |
| GameBench 2 Overall | DuelLab GameBench 2 | – | 46.4† |
| GameBench 2 by reasoning setting | DuelLab GameBench 2 | – | 54.4† |
| Design Arena Website | Design Arena | – | 1270† |
| FrontierCode 1.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 56.2% | – |
| FrontierCode 2.0 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 48.8% | 17.8%† |
| Agents & tools | |||
| Terminal-Bench | Terminal-Bench | – | 12.1%† |
| APEX-Agents | Mercor | – | 54.5%† |
| Arena Agent | Arena (LMArena) | – | 2.1 |
| LiveBench Long Agentic | LiveBench | 82.9%† | – |
| LiveBench Browser | LiveBench | 86.9%† | – |
| LiveBench Agentic Coding | LiveBench | – | 59.4%† |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Vals AI | – | 74.5%† |
| GDPval-AA v2.1 | Artificial Analysis | 1831 | – |
| τ³-Banking (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 37.3%† |
| Analyst Agent (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 46.3%† |
| CyberBench | Vals AI | – | 61.9%† |
| Finance Agent v2 | Vals AI | – | 53.9%† |
| Finance Agent v2.1 | Vals AI | 69.5%† | – |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1.1 | Vals AI | 5.0%† | – |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1 | Vals AI | – | 5.0%† |
| Legal Research Bench | Vals AI | 46.1%† | 41.8%† |
| SkillsBench | Vals AI | – | 46.5%† |
| SREBench | Vals AI | – | 0.4%† |
| Tax Agent Bench | Vals AI | 32.1%† | 29.4%† |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (Vals) | Vals AI | 65.2%† | 10.6%† |
| Terminal-Bench Science | Vals AI | 55.7%† | 5.7%† |
| Arena Search | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1191† |
| GBAEval | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 65.3%† |
| Vending-Bench 2 | Andon Labs | – | 6377.7† |
| AutomationBench | Artificial Analysis | 76.4% | 32.1% |
| GDP.pdf (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 24.2% | 9.4% |
| Harvey LAB-AA v1.1 | Harvey | 7.2% | – |
| EnterpriseOps-Gym | Artificial Analysis | – | 43.9%† |
| AA-Briefcase v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | 1785 | 1356† |
| Design Arena Agentic | Design Arena | – | 1217† |
| Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 73.3% | – |
| Maths | |||
| FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 65.6%† |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 29.3%† |
| OTIS Mock AIME | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 94.7%† |
| ProofBench | Vals AI | – | 77.0%† |
| LiveBench Mathematics | LiveBench | – | 92.9%† |
| Arena Maths | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1472 |
| Knowledge | |||
| SimpleQA Verified | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 32.9%† |
| LiveBench 2.0 Data Analysis | LiveBench | 81.5%† | – |
| LiveBench Research | LiveBench | 94.5%† | – |
| LiveBench 1.0 Data Analysis | LiveBench | – | 71.7%† |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | 66.8 | – |
| MMLU-Pro | Vals AI | – | 87.5%† |
| LegalBench | Vals AI | – | 83.9%† |
| CorpFin | Vals AI | – | 67.0%† |
| TaxEval | Vals AI | – | 75.6%† |
| BioMysteryBench | Vals AI | 83.7%† | – |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark | Vals AI | – | 66.3%† |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark v1.1 | Vals AI | 77.4%† | – |
| MedCode | Vals AI | – | 47.5%† |
| MedScribe | Vals AI | – | 76.0%† |
| Public Benefits Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | – | 66.0%† |
| DrugDiscoveryBench | Scale AI SEAL | – | 50.0%† |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1: accuracy | Artificial Analysis | 79.1% | – |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1: non-hallucination | Artificial Analysis | 40.7% | – |
| HealthBench Professional (AA) | OpenAI | 67.7% | – |
| Instruction following | |||
| LiveBench Language | LiveBench | – | 75.0%† |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | LiveBench | – | 63.9%† |
| Arena Instruction Following | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1467 |
| Human preference | |||
| Arena Text | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1461 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | EQ-Bench | – | 1221† |
| Arena Creative Writing | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1434 |
| Arena Multi-turn | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1473 |
| Arena Longer Queries | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1481 |
| Multimodal | |||
| Arena Vision | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1272 |
| LiveBench Design | LiveBench | 85.1%† | – |
| MMMU-Pro | Artificial Analysis | – | 77.3%† |
| MMMU-Pro (Vals) | Vals AI | – | 83.0%† |
| MortgageTax | Vals AI | – | 70.0%† |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 24.9%† |
| AA-3D | Artificial Analysis | 1271 | – |
| Long context | |||
| AA-LCR v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | 83.3% | 76.7% |
| Arena Document | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1469 |
| MLCR | Artificial Analysis | – | 4.4% |
| Composite | |||
| Epoch Capabilities Index | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 156.7† |
| LiveBench 2.0 | LiveBench | 84.9%† | – |
| LiveBench 1.0 | LiveBench | – | 76.0%† |
| AA Intelligence Index v5.0 | Artificial Analysis | 64.6 | – |
| AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2 | Artificial Analysis | – | 31.7 |
| AA Progress Index v1 | Artificial Analysis | – | 296.8 |
| Vals Index | Vals AI | 71.3† | – |
| Vals Finance Index | Vals AI | 63.6%† | – |
| Vals Science Index | Vals AI | 63.7%† | – |
| Vals Multimodal Index | Vals AI | – | 68.8%† |
Data as of 2026-11-09. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
DuelLab GameBench 2, release gb2-20261103-eaea31df94e6 (https://benchmarks.duellab.org/releases/gb2-20261103-eaea31df94e6/), CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Scores mapped to BenchLeader model names; not endorsed by DuelLab.
What changed
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high): 1 score revision.
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high): 1 score revision.
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high): 1 new result (AA Progress Index v1).
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high): BenchLeader Index 60.0 → 59.5.
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high): 1 new result (MLCR).
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high): 1 score revision.
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high): 2 new results (AutomationBench, GDP.pdf (AA)).
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high): 1 score revision.
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high): 1 score revision.
Related comparisons
- Claude Fable 5.2 vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Claude Fable 5.2 vs Gemini 4 Carbon
- Claude Fable 5.2 vs GPT-6 Astra
- Claude Sonnet 5 vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Claude Sonnet 5 vs Gemini 4 Carbon
- Claude Sonnet 5 vs GPT-6 Astra
- Claude Fable 5.2 vs Claude Fable 5
- Claude Fable 5.2 vs Claude Fable 5.1
Rankings: Best LLM overall · Best LLM for agents · Best cheap LLMs
Claude Fable 5.2 vs Claude Sonnet 5: questions
- Is Claude Fable 5.2 better than Claude Sonnet 5?
- Claude Fable 5.2 (max) leads on quality: 69.4 vs 59.2. The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Claude Fable 5.2 (max) is ahead overall as of 9 Nov 2026, but check the category scores for your use.
- Claude Fable 5.2 vs Claude Sonnet 5: which is cheaper, and will that change?
- Claude Sonnet 5 is cheaper today: $4.00 against $16.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token. No price change has been announced for either.
- Is Claude Fable 5.2 or Claude Sonnet 5 better for coding?
- Claude Fable 5.2 scores higher in coding (80 vs 60 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is faster, Claude Fable 5.2 or Claude Sonnet 5?
- Claude Sonnet 5 streams faster (105 vs 72 output tokens per second, Artificial Analysis 7-day median).
- Which is better for long documents?
- Claude Fable 5.2 scores higher on long-context benchmarks (66 vs 63). Both accept 1,000,000 tokens of context.
More questions (3)
- Which has lower latency?
- Claude Fable 5.2 answers first: 3.0 s against 15.6 s to the first answer token, as Artificial Analysis measures it. Reasoning effort drives most of this: a higher setting thinks longer before it answers.
- Do independent benchmarks agree on Claude Fable 5.2 vs Claude Sonnet 5?
- Across the 7 benchmarks both have, Claude Fable 5.2 leads 7, Claude Sonnet 5 leads 0. Every overall index that rates both puts Claude Fable 5.2 ahead.
- When was Claude Fable 5.2 released?
- Claude Fable 5.2 was released on 9 Nov 2026.