Everyone wants to be cranking their AI effort sliders to max. The numbers suggest that’s often a waste of money/tokens. I compared scores and cost per task across 17 models at different effort levels. In many cases, high or xhigh gets you nearly the same results for a fraction of the cost. Opus 5.5 at xhigh scores 43.38 for $5.18. At max, it scores 45.45 for $12.82. That’s less than 5% more performance for almost 2.5x the cost. Sometimes a cheaper model does just as well. GPT-6.1 Sol at low comes surprisingly close to models costing 20 times more. And more effort doesn’t always mean better results. Several models actually score lower at max than at high. Only 7 of the 17 models perform best at max. The rest give you a good reason to stop blindly pushing that slider. Check other models’ optimal effort setting: https://codingplans.dev/recipes/optimal-effort/ submitted by /u/OldWorldKestrell
Originally posted by u/OldWorldKestrell on r/ClaudeCode