Claude Opus 5.5 is the best AI for code reviews where correctness matters. Good review is judgment: noticing the race condition, the missing migration, the change that breaks a caller three modules away. Opus 5.5 is strongest at reading code in the context of the whole system. For routine pull requests — style, naming, obvious mistakes — Claude Haiku 5.5 reviews at a fraction of the cost per PR.
The safest code reviews default, the cheaper option worth trying first, and the specialist pick — before you read the detail below.
Claude Opus 5.5 is the strongest answer here for code reviews — pick it when quality of output matters more than the $4.00/1M/1M input you pay for it.
GPT-6.1 Sol handles the same job for about 50% less per token. Start here and only move up if the output is not good enough.
Claude Haiku 5.5 is the fastest of these for code reviews — worth it when latency is what the reader notices, not the last few points of reasoning depth.
Claude Opus 5.5 is the best review model when correctness and subtle trade-offs matter.
GPT-6.1 Sol and Claude Sonnet 5.5 are strong mid-priced reviewers for most teams.
Claude Haiku 5.5 makes an automatic first pass on every PR affordable.
Use Claude Opus 5.5 when a change has production, security or architectural implications.
Use GPT-6.1 Sol or Claude Sonnet 5.5 for everyday review support.
Use Claude Haiku 5.5 to flag obvious issues automatically before a human looks.
Switch the scoring lens to see whether the code reviews answer changes when cost, speed, or long-document depth leads the decision.
Anthropic / Balanced / Oct 10, 2026
Near-Opus 5.5 quality on scoped work at half the price.
Ranks models by the broadest mix of coding, writing, research, and long-context usefulness.
The work is long, ambiguous and multi-step — Anthropic positions Opus 5.5 for exactly that — or you need the lowest possible price, where Haiku 5.5 costs a twentieth as much.
Where the code reviews recommendation shifts once you weigh price or latency differently.
Anthropic's new coding default — top SWE-bench Pro score at a lower price than Opus 5.
Near-Astra capability at Sol pricing — OpenAI's value pick.
Near-Opus 5.5 quality on scoped work at half the price.
Anthropic's budget model, now with adjustable reasoning, at $0.10/$0.50.
List prices and published scores — the numbers this page's pick is built from.
| Model | Input | Output | Est. month | Context | Speed | Coding | Writing | Research |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 5.5Anthropic | $4.00/1M | $20.00/1M | $80 | 1M tokens | Deliberate | 100 | 97 | 99 |
| GPT-6.1 SolOpenAI | $2.00/1M | $10.00/1M | $40 | 1.1M tokens | Balanced | 98 | 94 | 97 |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5Anthropic | $2.00/1M | $10.00/1M | $40 | 1M tokens | Fast | 98 | 98 | 95 |
| Claude Haiku 5.5Anthropic | $0.10/1M | $0.50/1M | $2.00 | 1M tokens | Very fast | 86 | 84 | 82 |
Scores out of 100 — how we evaluate models. “Est. month” is 10M in / 2M out at list price: a ceiling, no discounts.
Why each one is on the shortlist for code reviews, what it is genuinely good at, and where we would steer you away from it.
Our pick for code reviews. It scores 100/100 on the coding axis we weight this page by, and nothing else in this shortlist matches it on output quality.
Anthropic's September 22, 2026 Opus — a step up from Opus 5 on agentic coding, long-running agent work and vision, at a lower $4/$20 list price and with fewer tokens spent per finished task.
Your tasks are well-scoped and latency-sensitive — Sonnet 5.5 is half the price and Anthropic says it is the fastest Sonnet yet.
The new premium coding default from Anthropic. Opus 5.5 posts the highest SWE-bench Pro figure in any launch table we track and costs less than Opus 5 did. Fable 5.1 still makes sense for the hardest open-ended research at $10/$50; for almost everything else Opus 5.5 is the better buy, and Sonnet 5.5 at half the price is close behind on well-scoped work.
Full pricing, benchmark table and release notes on the Claude Opus 5.5 page.
The cost-conscious pick for code reviews, about 50% less per token than Claude Opus 5.5 than the top choice while holding 98/100 on coding.
OpenAI's September 29, 2026 DevDay release — a Sol-tier reasoning model that OpenAI says comes close to GPT-6 Astra on agentic coding, computer use and professional work at one fifth of Astra's price.
You need it inside ordinary ChatGPT chats today, or your prompts regularly pass 272K tokens where the rate doubles.
OpenAI's best value for serious work. GPT-6.1 Sol replaces both GPT-6 Sol and, for most teams, GPT-6 Astra: independent testing has it a point behind Astra at a fifth of the list price. Pick Astra only when the last point of capability is worth five times the bill.
Full pricing, benchmark table and release notes on the GPT-6.1 Sol page.
Also worth a look for code reviews, at 98/100 on the coding axis.
Near-Opus 5.5 quality on scoped work at half the price. Full Claude Sonnet 5.5 review →
Here for latency: it answers fastest of anything listed for code reviews, at 86/100 on coding.
Anthropic's budget model, now with adjustable reasoning, at $0.10/$0.50. Full Claude Haiku 5.5 review →
UseRightAI recommendations are based on practical decision factors people actually feel in day-to-day use.
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For code reviews, Claude Opus 5.5 (Anthropic) is our pick. Anthropic's new coding default — top SWE-bench Pro score at a lower price than Opus 5. It costs $4/1M input and $20/1M output tokens, with a 1M-token context window — enough headroom for all but the largest code reviews jobs. GPT-6.1 Sol is the closest alternative if it doesn't fit your setup.
Because the work it is built for overlaps closely with code reviews: repository-scale changes and PR work — Anthropic reports 89.9% on SWE-bench Pro, up from 79.2% for Opus 5 and long unattended agent runs where per-task token spend matters as much as the per-token price. The new premium coding default from Anthropic. Opus 5.5 posts the highest SWE-bench Pro figure in any launch table we track and costs less than Opus 5 did. Fable 5.1 still makes sense for the hardest open-ended research at $10/$50; for almost everything else Opus 5.5 is the better buy, and Sonnet 5.5 at half the price is close behind on well-scoped work.
On a moderate month — 10M input and 2M output tokens — Claude Opus 5.5 runs about $80.00 at list price, with no batch or caching discounts applied, so treat that as a ceiling. Claude Haiku 5.5 is the cheaper route at roughly $2.00 for the same volume, if code reviews is high-volume enough for price to lead the decision.
Not ahead everywhere: Anthropic's own table has Opus 5 higher on Toolathlon Verified (80.6% vs 77.8%). Fast mode doubles the price to $8/$40. Avoid it if your tasks are well-scoped and latency-sensitive — Sonnet 5.5 is half the price and Anthropic says it is the fastest Sonnet yet. None of that rules it out for code reviews on its own — but if one of those limits maps onto how you actually work, take the alternative on this page seriously rather than defaulting to the top pick.
Claude Haiku 5.5 at $0.1/1M input is the budget option here. Anthropic's budget model, now with adjustable reasoning, at $0.10/$0.50. Expect a quality step down on the hardest cases — the usual pattern is to route routine code reviews volume to Claude Haiku 5.5 and keep Claude Opus 5.5 for the work where a wrong answer is expensive.
Claude Haiku 5.5, rated very fast against Claude Opus 5.5's deliberate. Speed matters most for interactive and high-volume work; if your code reviews runs in the background, the slower and more capable model is usually the better trade.