# Claude Sonnet 5 vs Claude Sonnet 5.5

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Sonnet 5 and Claude Sonnet 5.5 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-claude-sonnet-5-5
- Last updated: September 28, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 7
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.7

## Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude Sonnet 5 only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads overall 80.49 to 66.98.
- The clearest category separation is in coding, where the averages are 59.8 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 79.6 for Claude Sonnet 5.5.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is SWE Multimodal in Coding, with scores of 28.1% and 54.3%.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Claude Sonnet 5 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Type | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Overall Score | 66.98 | 80.49 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 26 | 47 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $2.00 / $10.00 | $2.00 / $10.00 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5.5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 64.5 (Supported · #12/111)
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 public-lane score: 66.1 (Supported · #10/111)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 3.0 | 14.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 80.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BrowseComp | 84.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE w/ tools | 57.4% | 64.5% | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| OSWorld-Verified | 81.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 74.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ApprenticeBench | 16% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 | Coming soon | 70.60% | Coming soon |
| DRACO | Coming soon | 87.0% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 | Coming soon | 59.9% | Coming soon |
| LAB all-pass (Harvey held-out) | Coming soon | 10.0% | Coming soon |
| LAB criterion-pass (Harvey held-out) | Coming soon | 93.1% | Coming soon |
| Toolathlon Verified Pass@3 | Coming soon | 85.2% | Coming soon |
| Toolathlon Verified Pass³ | Coming soon | 68.5% | Coming soon |
| Toolathlon Verified avg. turns | Coming soon | 31.6 turns | Coming soon |
| AutomationBench (Zapier 1.0.6) | Coming soon | 44.7% | Coming soon |
| Toolathlon-Verified | Coming soon | 77.8% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Directional only
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 59.8 (Supported · #17/136)
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 public-lane score: 79.6 (Estimated · #3/136)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 85.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | 63.2% | 81.3% | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| SWE Multilingual | 78.3% | 90.3% | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| SWE Multimodal | 28.1% | 54.3% | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 80.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | 42.7% | 46.2% | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| cursorBench32 | 61.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| VulcanBench CII v1 | 89.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 82.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 79.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| cursorBench40 | 34.1% | 55.5% | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| DeepSWE | Coming soon | 71.0% | Coming soon |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Extended | Coming soon | 59.1% | Coming soon |
| ProgramBench | Coming soon | 79.7% | Coming soon |
| FrontierSWE v2 | Coming soon | 61.9% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 78.7 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 public-lane score: 79.2 (#7/27)

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 78.4 (#15/50)
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 public-lane score: 83.3 (Unranked · 7 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| CharXiv | 88.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv w/o tools | 77% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Chartography (no tools) | Coming soon | 61.6% | Coming soon |
| Chartography (tools) | Coming soon | 90.2% | Coming soon |
| BenchCAD Vision2Code (no tools) | Coming soon | 0.747 | Coming soon |
| BenchCAD Vision2Code (tools) | Coming soon | 0.963 | Coming soon |
| Biomedical image analysis | Coming soon | 72.2% | Coming soon |
| OfficeQA | Coming soon | 76.9% | Coming soon |
| OfficeQA Pro | Coming soon | 65.6% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5.5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 64.5 (Supported · #24/160)
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 public-lane score: 80.9 (Supported · #6/160)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| HLE | 57.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | 43.2% | 56.9% | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| HLE-Verified | 31.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LABBench2 | 80.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 88.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 87.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HealthBench (raw) | Coming soon | 69.4% | Coming soon |
| HealthBench (length-adjusted) | Coming soon | 65.4% | Coming soon |
| HealthBench Professional (raw) | Coming soon | 77.1% | Coming soon |
| HealthBench Professional | Coming soon | 69.2% | Coming soon |
| BioMysteryBench (human-solvable) | Coming soon | 89.2% | Coming soon |
| BioMysteryBench (human-difficult) | Coming soon | 44.7% | Coming soon |
| SpatialBench Verified | Coming soon | 72.5% | Coming soon |
| SingleCellBench | Coming soon | 59.1% | Coming soon |
| Protein Design | Coming soon | 51.0% | Coming soon |
| Morphology-to-molecule matching | Coming soon | 25.0% | Coming soon |
| Medicinal chemistry | Coming soon | 65.3% | Coming soon |
| Protein Design library ranking | Coming soon | 54.8% | Coming soon |
| De novo protein-binder design | Coming soon | 82.3% | Coming soon |
| Protocols (troubleshooting) | Coming soon | 67.3% | Coming soon |
| Protocols (understanding) | Coming soon | 66.6% | Coming soon |

### Multilingual

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GMMLU | Coming soon | 92.1% | Coming soon |
| MILU | Coming soon | 91.6% | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| ArXivMath Aug. 2026 (no tools) | Coming soon | 86.8% | Coming soon |
| ArXivMath Aug. 2026 (tools) | Coming soon | 95.2% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Sonnet 5 or Claude Sonnet 5.5?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Sonnet 5 and Claude Sonnet 5.5?

The widest category gap is in coding, where the averages are 59.8 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 79.6 for Claude Sonnet 5.5.

### How many benchmarks does Claude Sonnet 5 cover on BenchLM?

Claude Sonnet 5 currently has 26 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does Claude Sonnet 5.5 cover on BenchLM?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 currently has 47 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

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- [Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-vs-gpt-6-astra)
- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-claude-sonnet-5)
- [Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-claude-sonnet-5-5)

## Explore More

- [Claude Sonnet 5 profile](/models/claude-sonnet-5)
- [Claude Sonnet 5.5 profile](/models/claude-sonnet-5-5)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)