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Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 5 vs Baidu ERNIE 5.0

Anthropic against Baidu, compared on context, price, and verified benchmark results.

Catalog record checked September 3, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: High — see receipts below

Anthropic

Claude Sonnet 5

Balanced

vs

Baidu

Baidu ERNIE 5.0

Balanced

AI model capability comparison
SpecificationClaude Sonnet 5Baidu ERNIE 5.0
ProviderAnthropicBaidu
TierBalancedBalanced
Context windowWinner: 1M128K
Max output128KNot verifiedUnverified
Input / 1M tokens$2Winner: $1.40
Output / 1M tokens$10Winner: $5.60
WeightsClosedClosed
ParametersNot disclosedUnverified2.4T multimodal
Reasoning levelsadaptivelow, medium, high
Modalitiestext, imagetext, image
API model idclaude-sonnet-5ernie-5.0
ReleasedJune 30, 2026January 22, 2026
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (2026-08-14)Winner: 5545
Terminal-Bench 2.1 (2026-06-30)80.4Not verifiedUnverified
Humanity's Last Exam (2026-06-30)57.4Not verifiedUnverified
SWE-bench Verified (2026-09-01)79.6Not verifiedUnverified
LiveBench (2026-09-05)76Not verifiedUnverified

Prices are USD per million tokens at standard rates, excluding batch and caching discounts. Bold indicates the better figure where one is objectively better. Values we could not confirm from the provider are shown as “Not verified” rather than estimated.

Benchmark receipts

  • 2026-09-05: LiveBench official leaderboard (benchmark-owned), xhigh effortContamination-resistant general capability across reasoning, coding, math, data analysis, and language, with monthly question refreshes. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Rolling question set: observations months apart measure different question mixes. Record the measurement date and compare within ~1 month windows.
  • 2026-09-01: vals.ai SWE-bench Verified leaderboard (independent, mini-swe-agent bash-only); not published by Anthropic; a 72.7 CosmicJS claim is unverifiedReal GitHub issue resolution: does the model's patch pass the hidden tests. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Post-audit vendor claims and pre-audit scores sit on different task trust levels; scaffolding (agent harness, compute budget) also dominates results. Never aggregate across scaffolds.
  • 2026-08-14: Artificial AnalysisComposite index blending reasoning, knowledge, and coding evals into one 0–100 score. Comparability: directly comparable — AA occasionally rebaselines the index scale between snapshots — a score captured on one date is only comparable to same-snapshot scores (check measuredAt).
  • 2026-06-30: Anthropic announcement (vendor, with tools)Frontier-knowledge ceiling: extremely hard multi-domain questions written to be near-impossible without deep expertise. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Subset/tool configurations (text-only vs with-tools) differ between vendors and materially change scores; must match configuration to compare.
  • 2026-06-30: Anthropic announcement table (vendor, default effort; via Vellum transcription)Agentic terminal work: multi-step tasks executed in a sandboxed shell environment. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Scores across Terminal-Bench major versions (v1 vs v2) are NOT comparable; harness configuration (container, time limits) also shifts results.

Pricing tiers: Claude Sonnet 5: Standard $2/$10 per MTok; cache reads 10% of base input. Knowledge cutoff Jan 2026. · Baidu ERNIE 5.0: $1.40/$5.60 per MTok (Baidu international USD list; domestic CNY ¥6/¥24 ≈ $0.89/$3.54). Closed API.

BalancedRecord checked September 3, 2026

Claude Sonnet 5

Claude Sonnet 5 is Anthropic's best speed/intelligence balance for high-volume agentic work at $2/$10.

Best for

  • Everyday generation
  • High-volume agents
  • Cost-sensitive work

Watch out

A step below Opus 5 on the hardest tasks; pick Opus when quality is paramount.

BalancedRecord checked September 2, 2026

Baidu ERNIE 5.0

ERNIE 5.0 is Baidu's previous-generation 2.4T multimodal flagship.

Best for

  • Chinese-language work
  • Enterprise (China)
  • Multimodal

Watch out

Closed API; superseded by ERNIE 5.1.

When the cheaper one wins

Baidu ERNIE 5.0 is cheaper on output at $5.60 per million tokens against $10 for Claude Sonnet 5 — about 1.8×. Use the cheaper tier for classification, extraction, summarisation, and any task where the expensive model’s extra score does not change the accepted output. The expensive one only pays if your hardest task actually fails on the cheap tier. These are standard-tier API rates, excluding batch and cache discounts.

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Evidence confidence: High

How strong and complete the evidence behind this comparison is — not a prediction of which model is better.

  • Pricing verified on both sides — Input and output rates are verified for both models.
  • 3/5 core specs verified on both sides — Not published for at least one side: max output, parameter count.
  • 1 shared named benchmark with differing scores — Measured on: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index.
  • Verified within the last 90 days — Newest catalog check was 8 days ago.
  • Both models carry source citations — Each side has at least two catalog sources on record.

Source receipts

Each catalog figure was checked against the provider or an independent second source on the date shown.

Related comparisons

Diving deeper on one model? Claude Sonnet 5 · Baidu ERNIE 5.0

Common questions

Claude Sonnet 5 vs Baidu ERNIE 5.0

Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.

Is Claude Sonnet 5 or Baidu ERNIE 5.0 cheaper for input?

Baidu ERNIE 5.0 is cheaper at $1.40 per million input tokens, against $2 for Claude Sonnet 5 — roughly 1.4× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Claude Sonnet 5 has tiered pricing: Standard $2/$10 per MTok; cache reads 10% of base input. Knowledge cutoff Jan 2026. Baidu ERNIE 5.0 has tiered pricing: $1.40/$5.60 per MTok (Baidu international USD list; domestic CNY ¥6/¥24 ≈ $0.89/$3.54). Closed API.

Is Claude Sonnet 5 or Baidu ERNIE 5.0 cheaper for output?

Baidu ERNIE 5.0 is cheaper at $5.60 per million output tokens, against $10 for Claude Sonnet 5 — roughly 1.8× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Claude Sonnet 5 has tiered pricing: Standard $2/$10 per MTok; cache reads 10% of base input. Knowledge cutoff Jan 2026. Baidu ERNIE 5.0 has tiered pricing: $1.40/$5.60 per MTok (Baidu international USD list; domestic CNY ¥6/¥24 ≈ $0.89/$3.54). Closed API.

Which has the larger context window, Claude Sonnet 5 or Baidu ERNIE 5.0?

Claude Sonnet 5 accepts 1M tokens against 128K for Baidu ERNIE 5.0. This only matters if you routinely send very long documents or large codebases.

Do Claude Sonnet 5 and Baidu ERNIE 5.0 support the same reasoning levels?

Claude Sonnet 5 exposes adaptive, while Baidu ERNIE 5.0 exposes low, medium, high.

Should I use Claude Sonnet 5 or Baidu ERNIE 5.0?

Both sit in the balanced tier, so the choice usually comes down to price and context rather than capability. Claude Sonnet 5 suits everyday generation; Baidu ERNIE 5.0 suits chinese-language work.

Next step

Choosing between them

The verified figures that separate this pair, computed from the catalog rather than restated boilerplate.

  • Input price: Baidu ERNIE 5.0 costs $1.40 per 1M tokens versus $2 for Claude Sonnet 5 — a 1.4x difference at the headline tier.
  • Context: Claude Sonnet 5 takes 1M against 128K for Baidu ERNIE 5.0 — only decisive if your prompts approach the smaller window.
  • Measured capability: Claude Sonnet 5 leads Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index 55 to 45 (measured 2026-08-14).
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