Sonnet 5.5 Called Best Free Model Yet: Near-Opus Performance at Half Price, Free for Everyone
DynaBeast · reddit · 2026-09-29
A Reddit user argues Sonnet 5.5 is by far the best free model available:
- Paying users on $100/$200 plans lean on Opus 5.5, but free users only get Sonnet access.
- The previous Sonnet 5 barely competed with Gemini Flash-class models, while Sonnet 5.5 reportedly matches Opus 5.5 on most benchmarks at half the price — and it's free for Claude's free tier.
- The author reasons it likely beats Fable 5.1, and says OpenAI needs to wake up after this release.
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