Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Beam 1.0 501B A23B
Updated October 21, 2026. 28 benchmarks have a result for both. Coding is ranked on the Vibe Coding Index; every other board is shown as published.
Decision reading
Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 for coding: it scores 88.9 on the Vibe Coding Index against 33.8 for Beam 1.0 501B A23B.
Pick Beam 1.0 501B A23B when output tokens cost 10.0x less, or when the context window is larger, 1.05M against 1M tokens.
- Shared results
- 28
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 only
- 67
- Beam 1.0 501B A23B only
- 0
- Like-for-like categories
- 6 of 9
Shared results can support a head-to-head reading. Results only one model has describe coverage, not superiority.
Which one for your work
Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, four public coding benchmarks
Claude Sonnet 5.5
Claude Sonnet 5.5 scores 88.9 against 33.8.
2 and 1 benchmarks behind the scores
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
No call
Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 has a AA Intelligence Index result, 56.0.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
Claude Sonnet 5.5
Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads, 1326 against 1253.
Same board, both measured
General
Vals Index
No call
Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 has a Vals Index result, 70.8%.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
Beam 1.0 501B A23B
Beam 1.0 501B A23B takes 1.05M tokens against 1M.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Beam 1.0 501B A23B
Claude Sonnet 5.5 $0.0070, Beam 1.0 501B A23B $0.0008 per turn.
List prices
At a glance
- Coding index
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 88.9 from 2 benchmarks, Beam 1.0 501B A23B 33.8 from 1 benchmark.
- Widest category
- Coding, 23.0 points apart on average over 5 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- LMArena WebDev: Claude Sonnet 5.5 1768 against Beam 1.0 501B A23B 1437, 47.4 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 $10.00 against Beam 1.0 501B A23B $1.00 per million output tokens, 10.0x apart.
- Context window
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 takes 1M tokens, Beam 1.0 501B A23B 1.05M.
Benchmark by benchmark
First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.
| Category | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Bars | Beam 1.0 501B A23B | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 5 | 0 | ||
| Reasoning | 3 | 0 | ||
| Math | 2 | 0 | ||
| Knowledge | 4 | 0 | ||
| Web design | 2 | 0 | ||
| General | 12 | 0 | ||
| All shared boards | 28 | 0 |
CodingLike-for-likeFour of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index50
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Beam 1.0 501B A23B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench coding | 94.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| LMArena WebDev | 1768 | 1437 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| Terminal-Bench 4 (Vals AI) | 64.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 92.4% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | 69.8% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| ProgramBench (Vals AI) | 6.5% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| IOI (Vals AI) | 83.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | 83.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| SWE-bench Multimodal (Vals AI) | 58.3% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| CyberBench (Vals AI) | 59.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| SciCode | 61.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| FrontierCode | 52.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| FrontierSWE | 61.9% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| ALE-Bench | 1819.1 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1513 | 1473 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1504 | 1461 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| LMArena WebDev: React | 1817 | 1443 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | 1741 | 1436 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| LMArena WebDev: from an image | 1737 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 19 boards here | |||
IntelligenceDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index2 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Beam 1.0 501B A23B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 56.0 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 166.2 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
Agentic workDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index18 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Beam 1.0 501B A23B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: agents building web apps | 1303 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building mobile apps | 1265 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Design Arena: spreadsheets | 1245 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| LiveBench research | 83.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| LiveBench browser | 84.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| LiveBench long agentic | 78.8% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| SREBench (Vals AI) | 30.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | 58.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | 42.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | 48.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark (Vals AI) | 10.4% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | 75.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| BioMysteryBench (Vals AI) | 81.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Terminal-Bench-Science (Vals AI) | 47.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Vals Science Index | 59.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| APEX-Agents | 75.5% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| SpireClimb | 1.3% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Vending-Bench 2 | $11,165 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 21 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index30
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Beam 1.0 501B A23B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench reasoning | 91.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| MysteryMechanism (Vals AI) | 49.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 55.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 95.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Chess puzzles | 59.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Mystery game puzzles | 65.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1494 | 1442 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1531 | 1447 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1502 | 1451 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| LMArena Vision: diagrams | 1329 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| LMArena Vision: homework | 1331 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 10 boards here | |||
MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Beam 1.0 501B A23B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME | 100.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | 88.8% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| FrontierMath, tier 4 | 80.5% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| ProofBench | 100.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1497 | 1459 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1510 | 1475 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| Neither model has a result on the other 7 boards here | |||
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index40
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Beam 1.0 501B A23B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MedCode (Vals AI) | 52.9% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| SimpleQA Verified | 46.5% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1483 | 1430 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1464 | 1376 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1483 | 1433 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1468 | 1430 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| Neither model has a result on the other 11 boards here | |||
Web designLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Beam 1.0 501B A23B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1326 | 1253 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1367 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1469 | 1222 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1389 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1458 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1364 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| LiveBench design | 85.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 2 boards here | |||
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index120
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Beam 1.0 501B A23B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vals Index | 70.8% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| LiveBench data analysis | 59.5% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI) | 67.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 51.8% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | 91.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 82.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| DTBench | 97.3% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| LMCA | 68.3% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Furniture assembly | 75.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| LMArena Text | 1473 | 1425 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1492 | 1430 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1467 | 1390 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| LMArena Vision | 1287 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1484 | 1436 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1456 | 1413 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1535 | 1424 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| LMArena Text: French | 1499 | 1461 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1451 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1454 | 1412 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1465 | 1414 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1495 | 1429 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1474 | 1400 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1461 | 1399 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
| LMArena Vision: English | 1289 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| LMArena Vision: reading text | 1297 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| LMArena Vision: creative writing | 1242 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 20 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Beam 1.0 501B A23B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 5 boards here | |||
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.
Chat turn
1K input + 500 output tokens
Beam 1.0 501B A23B costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Beam 1.0 501B A23B costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Beam 1.0 501B A23B costs less
Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.
Specification differences
The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.
| Specification | Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Reflection Beam 1.0 501B A23B |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Anthropic | Reflection |
| Weights | No public weights listed | Open weights |
| Released | September 28, 2026 | October 16, 2026 |
| Context window | 1M | 1.05M |
| Input $/Mtok | $2.00 | $0.30 |
| Output $/Mtok | $10.00 | $1.00 |
| Coding index | 88.9 | 33.8 |
| Independent measurements behind it | 2 | 1 |
| Cost per solved task | Not computable | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Claude Sonnet 5.5 better than Beam 1.0 501B A23B for coding?
Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 for coding: it scores 88.9 on the Vibe Coding Index against 33.8 for Beam 1.0 501B A23B. Pick Beam 1.0 501B A23B when output tokens cost 10.0x less, or when the context window is larger, 1.05M against 1M tokens.
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5.5 or Beam 1.0 501B A23B?
Claude Sonnet 5.5 costs $2.00 per million input tokens and $10.00 per million output tokens; Beam 1.0 501B A23B costs $0.30 and $1.00. Cost per solved task is known for neither of them.
Which has the bigger context window, Claude Sonnet 5.5 or Beam 1.0 501B A23B?
Beam 1.0 501B A23B, with 1.05M tokens against 1M.
How many benchmarks is the Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Beam 1.0 501B A23B comparison based on?
28 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. Claude Sonnet 5.5's coding index rests on 2 independent benchmarks and Beam 1.0 501B A23B's on 1. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.