Claude Sonnet 5.5 and coding-agent rivals — strong scores versus cost, reliability, and security risk

Sonnet 5.5 is positioned as a faster, cheaper routine-work model with lower token use, fewer tool calls, and stronger cyber safeguards; Anthropic claims near-Opus Terminal-Bench and GDPval performance. Claude for Government adds FedRAMP High, audit logs, spending caps, SCIM controls, and managed conversation history. Real-SWE, SWE-sweep, security incidents, and token-burn reports still show a major gap between headline coding scores and difficult real-world bug fixing.