GPT-5 vs Claude Opus 4.6
OpenAI vs Anthropic · Prices checked 12 August 2026
GPT-5 is the cheaper of the two by a wide margin: $3.88 per million tokens blended against $11.00, roughly 2.8× less. A single 100K-input, 10K-output job costs $0.225 on GPT-5 against $0.750 on Claude Opus 4.6.
GPT-5 leads on 6 of the 6 benchmarks both models report. The widest gap is on LMArena Elo, where GPT-5 leads by 21 points. Claude Opus 4.6 takes a 1,000,000-token context window against 400,000, giving 2.5× more room for long documents or whole-codebase work. GPT-5 was released 2025; Claude Opus 4.6 Nov 2025.
Pricing and capacity
| Metric | GPT-5 | Claude Opus 4.6 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input / 1M tokens | $1.25 | $5.00 | 4.0× |
| Output / 1M tokens | $10.00 | $25.00 | 2.5× |
| Blended · 70/30calculated | $3.88 | $11.00 | 2.8× |
| Blended · 50/50calculated | $5.63 | $15.00 | 2.7× |
| Blended · 80/20calculated | $3.00 | $9.00 | 3.0× |
| Blended · 20/80calculated | $8.25 | $21.00 | 2.5× |
| Job cost · 100K + 10Kcalculated | $0.225 | $0.750 | 3.3× |
| Job cost · 1M + 100Kcalculated | $2.25 | $7.50 | 3.3× |
| Context window | 400,000 | 1,000,000 | 2.5× |
Input and output rates are as published by each provider. Blended and job-cost rows are calculated comparison metrics, not published prices — how they are derived.
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | GPT-5 | Claude Opus 4.6 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU | 91% | 88% | GPT-5 |
| GPQA Diamond | 84% | 79% | GPT-5 |
| MATH | 95% | 92% | GPT-5 |
| HumanEval | 96% | 95% | GPT-5 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 75% | 72% | GPT-5 |
| LMArena Elo | 1399 Elo | 1378 Elo | GPT-5 |
Only suites both models report are listed, so a missing score is never shown as a loss. Figures are provider-published or from public leaderboards and are not independently re-run.
What each model is for
GPT-5
OpenAI · Frontier
OpenAI's 2025 flagship, unified reasoning + multimodal model with a 400K context. Replaces the GPT-4 line as the default ChatGPT and API model.
- Unified reasoning + chat
- 400K context
- Native vision
- Strong tool use
Claude Opus 4.6
Anthropic · Previous
The flagship of the Claude 4 generation. 1M-token context is GA, and Opus 4.6 leads on agentic coding, long-horizon reasoning and tool-use reliability.
- Agentic coding (Claude Code)
- 1M-token context, GA
- Tool use & function calling
- Multi-step reasoning
Frequently asked questions
Which is cheaper, GPT-5 or Claude Opus 4.6?
GPT-5 is the cheaper of the two by a wide margin: $3.88 per million tokens blended against $11.00, roughly 2.8× less. A single 100K-input, 10K-output job costs $0.225 on GPT-5 against $0.750 on Claude Opus 4.6. Blended cost weights input at 70% and output at 30%; price your own token split for an exact answer, since the cheaper model on a blended basis is not always cheaper for your workload.
Which performs better, GPT-5 or Claude Opus 4.6?
GPT-5 leads on 6 of the 6 benchmarks both models report. The widest gap is on LMArena Elo, where GPT-5 leads by 21 points. These are the figures each provider or public leaderboard publishes, not results we re-run, and a benchmark average can hide the specific behaviour your workload depends on.
Which has the larger context window, GPT-5 or Claude Opus 4.6?
Claude Opus 4.6 takes a 1,000,000-token context window against 400,000, giving 2.5× more room for long documents or whole-codebase work. The context window caps everything in a single request: prompt, retrieved documents, conversation history and the model’s own output all share it.
Can I compare GPT-5 and Claude Opus 4.6 on my own numbers?
Yes. Open both in the side-by-side comparison tool to see every field at once, or use the token calculator to price your actual prompt and monthly request volume against each model. Both are free and need no sign-up.
Price it for your own workload
Related matchups
Terms used on this page
Prices and scores are recomputed on every deploy from the catalogue. Prices checked 12 August 2026.