Claude Sonnet 5.5: compare cost per accepted task
Evaluate effort, retries and checked output together. A cheaper token or impressive benchmark does not guarantee a cheaper completed job.
In brief
Anthropic positions Sonnet 5.5 around efficiency at different reasoning efforts. For your use, compare the total cost of a result that passes your checks, not just the price of one request.
A model that needs fewer repairs can be economical even when a first response is not the cheapest.
Use an acceptance rule
For extracting a small table, specify required fields and how missing values should appear. Check them against the source. Do not call a fluent but incorrect answer successful merely because it returned quickly.
Compare equivalent runs
Keep task, source material, tool access and output constraints consistent. Record the selected effort rather than comparing a minimal setting with another model’s maximal one. Repeat on a few representative cases before making a workflow-wide decision.
Measure the total job
Include retries, tool usage and time spent correcting output. Use current provider pricing for your account and platform. If different examples fail in different ways, keep that detail instead of reducing the whole evaluation to one invented accuracy score.
Before you act
Publisher benchmark comparisons depend on their workloads and settings. They are not LA24X measurements or a guaranteed percentage saving for your account.
What to do next
- Choose a representative task and define its acceptance check.
- Compare equivalent inputs and effort settings.
- Record total usage, retries and review time for accepted results.
