Head-to-head comparison across 2benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
Claude 3.5 Sonnet
40
Claude Sonnet 5
94
Pick Claude Sonnet 5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude 3.5 Sonnet only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.
Coding
+14.2 difference
Knowledge
+2.0 difference
Claude 3.5 Sonnet
Claude Sonnet 5
$3 / $15
$3 / $15
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
200K
1M
Pick Claude Sonnet 5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude 3.5 Sonnet only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.
Claude Sonnet 5 is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 94 to 40. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
Claude Sonnet 5's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 63.2 against 49. Claude 3.5 Sonnet does hit back in knowledge, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.
Claude Sonnet 5 is the reasoning model in the pair, while Claude 3.5 Sonnet is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. Claude Sonnet 5 gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 200K for Claude 3.5 Sonnet.
Claude Sonnet 5 is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 94 to 40.
Claude 3.5 Sonnet has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 59.4 versus 57.4. Claude Sonnet 5 stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.
Claude Sonnet 5 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 63.2 versus 49. Claude 3.5 Sonnet stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.
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