Updated daily · Arena + Artificial Analysis
Strategy & Hard Analysis
Pricing decisions, ICP definition, board-level analysis, expert-domain questions. The highest-stakes thinking you delegate.
One board from The GTM Model Leaderboard
Quick answer
For Strategy & Hard Analysis, Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 (Max effort) leads at #1 Standing on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index + Arena Text (Expert/Hard), ahead of Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh effort). DemandLab recaptures this board daily; these numbers are from September 23, 2026. Rankings are job-specific, so the winner here is not the winner on the other seven boards.
Compiled by Chris Arden, Fractional CMO, DemandLab · Updated on
Strategy & Hard Analysis Leaderboard
Pricing decisions, ICP definition, board-level analysis, expert-domain questions. The highest-stakes thinking you delegate.
- 1Claude Opus 5.5 (Max effort)AnthropicAA Intelligence Index 58#1Standing
- 2Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh effort)AnthropicAA Intelligence Index 56#2Standing
- 3Claude Opus 5.5 (High effort)AnthropicAA Intelligence Index 54#3Standing
- 4Claude Fable 5.1 (Max effort)AnthropicAA Intelligence Index 53#4Standing
- 5Claude Fable 5.1 (Xhigh effort)AnthropicAA Intelligence Index 53#5Standing
Operator take · New #1. Claude Opus 5.5 now sits at the top of the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, and it takes the first three slots across effort levels: Max at 58, Xhigh at 56, High at 54. Claude Fable 5.1 follows at 53 for both Max and Xhigh. GPT-6 Astra, which tied Fable 5.1 at 53 last capture, no longer shows in the top five on the card. The card did not surface cost per task today, so last capture's pricing figures are not repeated here. The practical read: the effort setting matters as much as the model, since Opus 5.5 High (54) beats Fable 5.1 Max (53). For board-level calls where a wrong answer costs more than API spend, test Opus 5.5 at max effort against whatever you run now, and check the per-task cost before you commit.
Updated daily from the linked public leaderboards; last capture September 23, 2026. Elo and win-rate figures are preference-based measures, not task-completion guarantees. Always validate the top pick on your own representative work before routing production volume to it.
How to Read These Rankings
Four rules before you switch models
- Every ranking is task-specific. The #1 agent model is not the #1 writer, and neither is the right pick for 10,000 Clay rows.
- Scores come from public leaderboards (Arena, Artificial Analysis) with capture dates shown. Preference Elo measures which output people like, not whether work gets completed.
- Reasoning effort and harness matter: the same model at a different effort tier or in a different agent harness ranks differently.
- Cheap plus fast beats frontier for volume work. Route by job, not by brand loyalty.
Frequently Asked Questions
Strategy & Hard Analysis: common questions
Which AI model is best for Strategy & Hard Analysis?
As of September 23, 2026, Claude Opus 5.5 (Max effort) from Anthropic ranks first for Strategy & Hard Analysis at #1 Standing on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index + Arena Text (Expert/Hard). Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh effort) ranks second at #2, and Claude Opus 5.5 (High effort) third at #3. DemandLab recaptures the board daily, so check the date above before quoting a position.
Where do these AI model rankings come from?
Strategy & Hard Analysis is scored from the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index + Arena Text (Expert/Hard) (https://artificialanalysis.ai/models), measured by Standing. DemandLab captures the public results, maps them to the go-to-market job they apply to, and publishes them unmodified. No scores are estimated, blended, or adjusted, and any board that cannot be read on a given day is left unchanged rather than guessed.
How often is the GTM Model Leaderboard updated?
Daily. The last capture was September 23, 2026. Model leaderboards move faster than most buying cycles, and positions inside a confidence interval can flip overnight, so DemandLab treats a single day's order as one observation rather than a trend.
Should I switch to the top-ranked model?
Not automatically. New #1. Claude Opus 5.5 now sits at the top of the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, and it takes the first three slots across effort levels: Max at 58, Xhigh at 56, High at 54. Claude Fable 5.1 follows at 53 for both Max and Xhigh. GPT-6 Astra, which tied Fable 5.1 at 53 last capture, no longer shows in the top five on the card. The card did not surface cost per task today, so last capture's pricing figures are not repeated here. The practical read: the effort setting matters as much as the model, since Opus 5.5 High (54) beats Fable 5.1 Max (53). For board-level calls where a wrong answer costs more than API spend, test Opus 5.5 at max effort against whatever you run now, and check the per-task cost before you commit.
DemandLab routes these models inside production GTM systems every day. If you want help picking and wiring the right models into your own stack, that's what DemandLab does.