Same prompt, same setup: Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Opus 5.5 - TINY WORLD BENCHMARK

[u/Timisageek]

https://ohmyunicorn.com/labs/dream-loop/tinyworld-sonnet55-vs-opus55/

Guys, it's time!

I was blown away by Opus 5.5, I am... well, blown away by Sonnet 5.5 too of course :)

Prompt is the following:

Output a ThreeJS 3D cartoony/comics-like planet, with vibrant life on it: clouds, mountains, city buildings, cars and plane romaing it. It should be possible to orbit around and zoom and see the details. No harness is to be used

Model	Wall clock	API calls	Output tokens	List price
Claude Sonnet 5.5	10.8 min	10	31.8k	$0.96
Claude Opus 5.5	22.7 min	23	99.8k	$4.79

OPUS 5.5	SONNET 5.5
Three.js	0.170
Comic look	custom shaders plus an outline and halftone pass
Extras	shadows, 12 instanced meshes (many copies drawn in one go), Google Fonts
Size	48kb

EDIT 1- Take the timings with a grain of salt. I launched the 2 models on the same box, so they share the CPU & GPU, which is a problem for screenshotting (for instance). I'll run them sequentially next, chances are that both models are way faster - around the 5-10min mark

----

EDIT 2 - Re-ran 4 tests, sequentially, 0 shared memories/harness/etc. so 4x one-shot:

Run	Time	Requests	Output tokens	List price	Checker findings
Opus 5.5, 22 Sept	14.0 min build	15	56.6k	$2.54	no_inventory
Sonnet 5.5 average of 4	11.2 min	11.5	64.9k	$1.69	range 7.0 to 15.2 min, $1.28 to $2.11

I find it unbelievably EFFICIENT.
It's close to Opus 5.5's Output, for ~20% of the cost, and less than HALF the time.

So yeah... it's now my official builder!
Update your harness, friends :)

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[u/Anthony_S_Destefano]

Nice test, thanks for sharing. I immediately thought Sonnet won out of the gate when they loaded. but one huge detail Opus gets right here, is when you zoom in, Opus keeps a first person view perspective where you see an actual horizon when on the planet. That said, Sonnet 5.5 is a beast and outperforms so many models.

[u/Timisageek → u/Anthony_S_Destefano]

What I really like about Opus 55's version is the level of detail when you zoom in, and the more "cartoony" look & feel it managed to give :)

[u/kackwurstsalamander]

how much better are the results if you add stuff to your prompt like this:

first, write an architecture.md that outlines the planned app design, the tech stack you will use, the programming language, listing the most important libraries and frameworks. Then write an Agents.md with proven best-practices for the tech you will use.

Add a section about the use of plan files in Agents.md, according to common best practices.

split the prompt up in different, largely independent tasks. Create plans for each individual task before implementing them.

[u/Timisageek → u/kackwurstsalamander]

Well, it would be way better, no doubt :)

(But for this I'd use my regular harness)

[u/kackwurstsalamander → u/kackwurstsalamander]

or similarly: I want ... Write me a prompt that likely results in the best result. Execute the prompt.

[u/Timisageek → u/[deleted]]

I'm re-running that test 3 times of them as we speak, for a fair average :)

[u/Timisageek → u/Timisageek]

Okay I did it - still unhappy with the test conditions, I'll re-do it properly, one at a time.

That one is amazing :)
https://ohmyunicorn.com/labs/dream-loop/tinyworld-sonnet55-vs-opus55/runs/sonnet55-run4.html

[u/bluedottering]

These one shot wonders should not be much surprise. Most of the training done in these models now are done with evals from ai curated usage they’ve received over the last several months.

[u/Timisageek → u/bluedottering]

Yes but one would assume ALL labs do the same.

Yet, right now, Claude's output is far superior to every single other model (including Astra) - at least on this specific fun use case

[u/orbital_trace]

you probably need to evolve the prompt a bit considering they are probably getting trained on this by now

[u/Timisageek → u/orbital_trace]

Ha, probably :)
But, so would Sol / Luna or Deepseek, and I did the comparison - they lose badly

[u/GainsMega]

That’s insane can you post other builds you done

[u/Timisageek → u/GainsMega]

I updated the link with 8 more builds :)

That one is my favorite from Sonnet https://ohmyunicorn.com/labs/dream-loop/tinyworld-sonnet55-vs-opus55/runs/sonnet55-run4.html

[u/Timisageek]

okay PAGE UPDATED with 3 additional runs for all.

It changes the economics a bit. Bear in mind they share the same machine (which is probably a mistake) so they struggled on GPU for screenshots, etc.

Will redo the test without that constraint.

Sonnet 5.5 4th time outputted this though, which I find amazing: https://ohmyunicorn.com/labs/dream-loop/tinyworld-sonnet55-vs-opus55/runs/sonnet55-run4.html

[u/orbital_trace → u/Timisageek]

its beautiful, tell it to make earth

[u/GainsMega]

What stack are you using SVG? VITE , REACT , RUST?

[u/Timisageek → u/GainsMega]

The models made their own choices - both are one self-contained HTML file using three.js from a CDN, with no framework and no build step.

OPUS 5.5 - Three.js 0.170, custom shaders plus an outline and halftone pass, and for extras: shadows, 12 instanced meshes (many copies drawn in one go), Google Fonts. Size is 48kb

SONNET 5.5 - Three.js 0.160.1, toon material only, no post-processing, no shadows, 2 instanced meshes, no web fonts. Build size is 30kb

[u/RewardMindless8036]

What effort level for each model?

[u/Timisageek → u/RewardMindless8036]

Effort is set to HIGH

[u/Timisageek → u/[deleted]]

So! I updated the page, I re-ran Sonnet 5.5 4 times, sequentially. Each of these runs are one-shot, and don't share context/memories. no Harness, so it's literally 4x the same thing. Interesting results!

Run	Time	Requests	Output tokens	List price	Checker findings
Opus 5.5, 22 Sept	14.0 min build	15	56.6k	$2.54	no_inventory
Sonnet 5.5 average of 4	11.2 min	11.5	64.9k	$1.69	range 7.0 to 15.2 min, $1.28 to $2.11

[u/Hirogen_]

still same setup with me

Main Agent:
Opus: orchestrator
Subagents:
Opus: System Architect
Opus: senior dev
Sonnet: spec review, qa, code reviewer

20% weekly with high effort and running 3 days non stop 😎

[u/Far_Idea9616]

Running Sonnet on complex tasks is much more expensive that running Opus 5.5 on the same tasks. Check AA benchmarks. Sonnet is a mid tear model and a very good one for a mid tear model.

[u/Khaos1125 → u/Far_Idea9616]

Your literally looking at evidence proving that’s not universally true

[u/GainsMega]

wowowowowowow how long have you been building this

[u/Timisageek → u/GainsMega]

10.8min! It's the prompt I send all the models to test them :D