Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Ember-1
Claude Sonnet 5.5 took 3 min 49 s and $0.34 at list price, Ember-1 took 25 min 56 s and $1.78 at list price. Ember-1 took 6.8× as long and cost 5.2× as much.
Claude Sonnet 5.5
Anthropic · $10.00/M out · 9 HN pts
Ember-1
Fireworks · $15.00/M out · 589 HN pts
Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 has CLI runs here (Claude Code).
Pelican
Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle
Watch
Draw a mechanical wristwatch that shows the current local time, with a sweeping seconds hand and a date window. Make it look expensive.
Landing
Build the landing page for Lumen Cycles, a Copenhagen workshop that builds custom cargo bikes to order. Make it look like a real brand you would trust with 4,000 euros.
Breakout
Make a Breakout game I can play right now with the keyboard or the mouse. Give it several levels, a score and some juice.
Logo
Design a logo for Night Heron, an independent bookshop that only opens after dark.
About
Write the opening of the About us page for Patchbay, a three-person studio in Rotterdam that repairs vintage synthesizers. About 150 words.
Patchbay is three people in a workshop in Rotterdam, trying to keep old synthesizers alive. We repair, restore and recalibrate the instruments that shaped electronic music: Moogs and Oberheims, Rolands and Sequential Circuits, the odd temperamental Soviet oddity that someone found in an attic.
Most of what lands on our benches has been silent for years. A crackling pot, a drifting oscillator, a power supply that gave up in 1994. Some come from working musicians who need their instrument back before the next tour. Others come from people who inherited a dusty box from a parent and want to hear what it sounds like.
We work slowly and by hand. We trace faults with a scope and a schematic, source or rebuild parts when originals are gone, and change as little as we can. Every synth leaves with a note describing exactly what we did, so the next person to open it knows where we have been.
Come by, bring your synth, and stay for coffee.
Patchbay is a three-person workshop in Rotterdam dedicated to keeping vintage synthesizers alive. We work on the machines that shaped electronic music — analog polysynths, temperamental drum machines, early digital oddities — replacing tired capacitors, rebuilding keybeds, and coaxing silent oscillators back into tune.
Between us we bring decades of experience in electronics, instrument design, and music-making, but what unites us is simpler: we believe these machines were built to be played, not displayed. Every repair happens by hand at our benches, with period-correct components wherever possible and thoughtful modern solutions where reliability demands it. We test everything the only way that matters — by listening.
Whether your Juno has lost a voice, your 808 has lost its kick, or a flea-market find needs a full restoration, we treat each instrument as if it were heading back to a studio, a stage, and a long life of making noise. Because it is.
Specs and numbers
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Ember-1 | |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Anthropic | Fireworks |
| Made in | US | US |
| Released | 28 Sep 2026 | 24 Sep 2026 |
| Price in, per M tokens | $2.00 | $3.00 |
| Price out, per M tokens | $10.00 | $15.00 |
| Context | 1,000,000 tokens | 1,048,576 tokens |
| Weights | closed | closed |
| Hacker News points | 9 | 589 |
| Time for the six prompts | 3 min 49 s | 25 min 56 s |
| List price of the six prompts | $0.34 | $1.78 |
Claude Sonnet 5.5 was cheaper: $1.44 less at list price, and less on each of the 6 prompts. Claude Sonnet 5.5 was faster: 22 min 7 s less in total, and faster on each of the 6 prompts.
In the recording, both Breakout games play.
Rebuild this screen experiment: Claude Sonnet 5.5's rebuild matched the screenshot at 94%, Ember-1's 67%. Tea Garden experiment: Claude Sonnet 5.5's game passed 5 of 5 checks, Ember-1's 5 of 5.