High-volume, cost-sensitive work
Choose GPT-5.6 Sol
GPT-5.6 Sol costs 20% less on a typical mix of three input tokens for every output token ($8.00 against $10.00 per million tokens).
Claude Opus 5 vs GPT-5.6 Sol: price, context and capabilities
Choose Claude Opus 5 for the hardest reasoning tasks. Choose GPT-5.6 Sol for high-volume, cost-sensitive work, writing and code generation, reused prompts and documents (RAG, agents) and reasoning over long documents.
In short
- GPT-5.6 Sol is 20% cheaper than Claude Opus 5 at the headline price ($8.00 / 1M tokens vs $10.00 / 1M tokens).
- GPT-5.6 Sol reads more per request: 1.05M tokens against 1M.
Which should you choose?
Each answer below comes straight from the published prices, specifications and independent benchmark results.
Writing and code generation
Choose GPT-5.6 Sol
GPT-5.6 Sol charges $20.00 per million output tokens, against $25.00 for Claude Opus 5. Output dominates the bill when answers are long.
Reused prompts and documents (RAG, agents)
Choose GPT-5.6 Sol
GPT-5.6 Sol charges $0.40 per million cached input tokens, against $0.50 for Claude Opus 5.
Hardest reasoning tasks
Choose Claude Opus 5
Claude Opus 5 scores 50.8 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, against 47 for GPT-5.6 Sol.
Reasoning over long documents
Choose GPT-5.6 Sol
GPT-5.6 Sol scores 84% on Long-context reasoning (AA-LCR), against 79.3% for Claude Opus 5.
Monthly cost at three volumes
| Volume | Claude Opus 5 | GPT-5.6 Sol | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prototype: 1M input, 250K output tokens | $11.25 | $9.00 | GPT-5.6 Sol, $2.25 less |
| Production: 20M input, 5M output tokens | $225.00 | $180.00 | GPT-5.6 Sol, $45.00 less |
| Scale: 500M input, 100M output tokens | $5,000 | $4,000 | GPT-5.6 Sol, $1,000 less |
Standard rates, without caching or batch discounts. Volumes are per month.
Specifications side by side
| Claude Opus 5 | GPT-5.6 Sol | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | OpenAI |
| Category | Language models | Language models |
| Status | Legacy | Generally available |
| Headline price | $10.00 / 1M tokens | $8.00 / 1M tokens |
| Input | $5.00 / 1M tokens | $4.00 / 1M tokens |
| Output | $25.00 / 1M tokens | $20.00 / 1M tokens |
| Cached input | $0.50 / 1M tokens | $0.40 / 1M tokens |
| Context window | 1M | 1.05M |
| Max output | 128k | 128k |
| Released | July 2026 | Jul 9, 2026 |
| Knowledge cutoff | No data | February 2026 |
| Licence | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Capabilities | Vision, Reasoning, Tool calling, Structured output, Prompt caching, Batch API | Vision, Reasoning, Tool calling, Structured output, Prompt caching, Batch API |
| API model id | claude-opus-5 | gpt-5.6-sol |
Benchmarks side by side
Leader in bold.
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5 | GPT-5.6 Sol |
|---|---|---|
| Intelligence Index | 50.8 | 47 |
| SciCode | 56.4% | 57.1% |
| GPQA Diamond | 93.2% | 94.1% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 54.9% | 49.5% |
| MMMU-Pro (visual reasoning) | 84.7% | 83.4% |
| Long-context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 79.3% | 84% |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | No data | 65.9% |
| IFBench (instruction following) | No data | 72.7% |
| τ²-Bench (agentic tool use) | No data | 85.1% |
Independent evaluations by Artificial Analysis, run the same way for every model, at the reasoning setting shown. Percentages unless marked as an index.
Frequently asked questions
Should I choose Claude Opus 5 or GPT-5.6 Sol?
Choose Claude Opus 5 for the hardest reasoning tasks. Choose GPT-5.6 Sol for high-volume, cost-sensitive work, writing and code generation, reused prompts and documents (RAG, agents) and reasoning over long documents.
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 5 or GPT-5.6 Sol?
GPT-5.6 Sol is 20% cheaper than Claude Opus 5 at the headline price ($8.00 / 1M tokens vs $10.00 / 1M tokens).
Which has the larger context window, Claude Opus 5 or GPT-5.6 Sol?
GPT-5.6 Sol reads more per request: 1.05M tokens against 1M.
What is the difference between Claude Opus 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol?
Claude Opus 5 is made by Anthropic and GPT-5.6 Sol by OpenAI. GPT-5.6 Sol is 20% cheaper than Claude Opus 5 at the headline price ($8.00 / 1M tokens vs $10.00 / 1M tokens). GPT-5.6 Sol reads more per request: 1.05M tokens against 1M.
How much do Claude Opus 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol cost per month?
At 20 million input and 5 million output tokens a month, Claude Opus 5 costs $225.00 and GPT-5.6 Sol costs $180.00, at standard rates.