Is GPT-5.6 Sol better than Claude Opus 4.5?

GPT-5.6 Sol (max) leads on quality: 65.4 vs 59.6. The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; GPT-5.6 Sol (max) is ahead overall as of 29 Oct 2026, but check the category scores for your use.

Claude Opus 4.5 vs GPT-5.6 Sol: which is cheaper, and will that change?

GPT-5.6 Sol is cheaper today: $8.00 against $10.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token. No price change has been announced for either.

Is Claude Opus 4.5 or GPT-5.6 Sol better for coding?

GPT-5.6 Sol scores higher in coding (66 vs 61 on the category index, where 50 is average). On LiveCodeBench, the top shared coding benchmark, it is 83.7% for Claude Opus 4.5 against 82.6% for GPT-5.6 Sol.

Which is faster, Claude Opus 4.5 or GPT-5.6 Sol?

GPT-5.6 Sol streams ~1.5× faster (85 vs 60 output tokens per second, Artificial Analysis 7-day median).

Is Claude Opus 4.5 or GPT-5.6 Sol better for agents and tool use?

Claude Opus 4.5 scores higher in agentic tasks (75 vs 67 on the category index, where 50 is average). On Terminal-Bench Hard, the top shared agents & tools benchmark, it is 47.0% for Claude Opus 4.5 against 65.9% for GPT-5.6 Sol.

Which is better for long documents?

GPT-5.6 Sol scores higher on long-context benchmarks (67 vs 63). GPT-5.6 Sol accepts more context: 1,050,000 against 200,000 tokens for Claude Opus 4.5.

Which has lower latency?

Claude Opus 4.5 answers first: 14.2 s against 86.2 s to the first answer token, as Artificial Analysis measures it. Reasoning effort drives most of this: a higher setting thinks longer before it answers.

When was GPT-5.6 Sol released?

GPT-5.6 Sol was released on 9 Jul 2026.

Claude Opus 4.5 vs GPT-5.6 Sol

Full profiles: Claude Opus 4.5 (Anthropic) and GPT-5.6 Sol (OpenAI): every benchmark, price and rank.

Updated 28 Oct 2026 · Data from 11 sources

As of 29 Oct 2026, GPT-5.6 Sol is ahead of Claude Opus 4.5 on quality (65.4 vs 59.6 on the BenchLeader Index), and GPT-5.6 Sol is 1.3× cheaper at $8.00 vs $10.00 per 1M tokens blended. Choose Claude Opus 4.5 for agents & tools (75 vs 67) and fast first answers (14.2 s vs 86.2 s); choose GPT-5.6 Sol for instruction following (71 vs 53), multimodal (66 vs 57), and reasoning (65 vs 57), where it also streams ~1.5× faster.

Key facts (as of 29 Oct 2026)

Claude Opus 4.5 scores 59.6 on the BenchLeader Index and GPT-5.6 Sol scores 65.4 (BenchLeader, 29 Oct 2026).
Claude Opus 4.5 costs $10.00 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 29 Oct 2026).
GPT-5.6 Sol costs $8.00 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 29 Oct 2026).
GPT-5.6 Sol streams ~1.5× faster than Claude Opus 4.5 (Artificial Analysis, 7-day median, 29 Oct 2026).
Of the 25 benchmarks both models have, GPT-5.6 Sol leads 18 (BenchLeader, 29 Oct 2026).

Claude Opus 4.5 benchmarks thinking Anthropic

GPT-5.6 Sol benchmarks max OpenAI Open in the comparison tool

Which to pick for…

The pick's numbers come first. Category scores on the BenchLeader scale (50 is the average model, 15 points one standard deviation). High confidence means a lead of half a standard deviation or more; under one point is called either.

Use case	Pick	Why	Confidence
Coding	GPT-5.6 Sol	66 vs 61 category score; LiveCodeBench 82.6% vs 83.7%	Medium
Agents & tool use	Claude Opus 4.5	75 vs 67 category score; Terminal-Bench Hard 47.0% vs 65.9%	High
Maths	GPT-5.6 Sol	71 vs 64 category score	Medium
Reasoning	GPT-5.6 Sol	65 vs 57 category score; ARC-AGI-2 92.5% vs 37.6%	High
Knowledge	GPT-5.6 Sol	64 vs 58 category score; MMLU-Pro 89.1% vs 87.3%	Medium
Long documents	GPT-5.6 Sol	67 vs 63 category score; AA-LCR v1.1 84.0% vs 77.3%	Medium
Images and other media	GPT-5.6 Sol	66 vs 57 category score; MMMU-Pro 83.4% vs 74.0%	High
Following instructions	GPT-5.6 Sol	71 vs 53 category score; IFBench 72.7% vs 58.0%	High
Lowest cost	GPT-5.6 Sol	$8.00 vs $10.00 per 1M blended; agentic coding session $0.320 vs $0.400	–
Fastest first answer	Claude Opus 4.5	14.2 s (Claude Opus 4.5 (thinking)) vs 86.2 s (GPT-5.6 Sol (max)) to the first answer token	–
High volume on a budget	Neither flagship	A smaller model is usually the better fit: Cheapest good LLMs, Fastest LLMs	–

Key differences

GPT-5.6 Sol (max) leads on quality: 65.4 vs 59.6.
Claude Opus 4.5 (thinking) is stronger in agents & tools.
GPT-5.6 Sol (max) is stronger in coding, instruction following, knowledge, long context, maths, multimodal, reasoning.
GPT-5.6 Sol (max) is 1.3× cheaper ($8.00 vs $10.00 per 1M blended).
GPT-5.6 Sol (max) streams 1.4× faster (85 vs 60 tokens per second).

At a glance

Spec	Claude Opus 4.5	GPT-5.6 Sol
Developer	Anthropic	OpenAI
Released	24 Nov 2025	9 Jul 2026
Context window (tokens)	200,000	1,050,000
Compared at	Claude Opus 4.5 (thinking)	GPT-5.6 Sol (max)
Open weights	No	No
Price in / out / cached input per 1M	$5.00 / $25.00 / $0.500	$4.00 / $20.00 / $0.400

Category by category

Category scores on the BenchLeader scale: 50 is the average evaluated model, 15 points is one standard deviation. A gap under one point is called level.

Category	Claude Opus 4.5 (thinking)	GPT-5.6 Sol (max)	Leader
Reasoning	57.4	65.1	GPT-5.6 Sol
Coding	60.5	65.8	GPT-5.6 Sol
Agents & tools	74.7	66.6	Claude Opus 4.5
Maths	64.0	70.8	GPT-5.6 Sol
Knowledge	58.1	63.9	GPT-5.6 Sol
Instruction following	53.0	71.1	GPT-5.6 Sol
Multimodal	57.1	66.2	GPT-5.6 Sol
Long context	63.4	66.9	GPT-5.6 Sol

Where sources disagree

Across the 25 benchmarks both have, Claude Opus 4.5 leads 7, GPT-5.6 Sol leads 18. Every overall index that rates both puts GPT-5.6 Sol ahead.

Overall index	Claude Opus 4.5 (thinking)	GPT-5.6 Sol (max)	Leader
BenchLeader Index	59.6	65.4	GPT-5.6 Sol
Arena Text	1474†	1485	GPT-5.6 Sol

Each publisher runs its own tasks, harnesses and effort settings, so their overall verdicts can differ; BenchLeader reconciles them on one scale. † measured at another effort setting of the same model (the publisher did not test the one compared here).

Price, speed and latency

List prices blended at three input tokens per output token. Per-task prices use the token counts on the methodology page; suite cost is what Artificial Analysis paid to run its whole Intelligence Index.

Measure	Claude Opus 4.5 (thinking)	GPT-5.6 Sol (max)
Blended price per 1M tokens	$10.00	$8.00
Input / output per 1M	$5.00 / $25.00	$4.00 / $20.00
Cached input per 1M	$0.500	$0.400
Price per task: chat reply	$0.0095	$0.0076
Price per task: summarize a 30-page report	$0.075	$0.060
Price per task: code edit	$0.068	$0.054
Price per task: agentic coding session	$0.400	$0.320
Price per task: structured extraction	$0.015	$0.012
Output speed	60 tok/s	85 tok/s
Time to first answer	14.2 s	86.2 s
Time to a complete answer	22.6 s	92.1 s

Each model is compared at its best-ranked reasoning-effort setting. Claude Opus 4.5 (thinking) scores 59.6 and takes 14 s to its first answer token; Claude Opus 4.5 (high) scores 59.1 in 1 s, Claude Opus 4.5 scores 57.9 in 1 s. GPT-5.6 Sol (max) scores 65.4 and takes 86 s to its first answer token; GPT-5.6 Sol (xhigh) scores 64.4 in 22 s, GPT-5.6 Sol (high) scores 63.6 in 11 s. Higher effort means more thinking before the answer: better scores, longer waits and more tokens billed. How reasoning effort changes scores and cost.

Every benchmark

164 benchmarks, grouped by category; each name links to the board and its leaders. † measured at another effort setting of the same model, shown for reference and not counted as a win.

Metric	Publisher	Claude Opus 4.5 (thinking)	GPT-5.6 Sol (max)
BenchLeader Index	BenchLeader	59.6	65.4
Agents & tools score	BenchLeader	74.7	66.6
Coding score	BenchLeader	60.5	65.8
Instruction following score	BenchLeader	53.0	71.1
Knowledge score	BenchLeader	58.1	63.9
Long context score	BenchLeader	63.4	66.9
Maths score	BenchLeader	64.0	70.8
Multimodal score	BenchLeader	57.1	66.2
Reasoning score	BenchLeader	57.4	65.1
Blended price $/M	BenchLeader	$10.00	$8.00
Output speed	BenchLeader	60 tok/s	85 tok/s
Time to first answer	BenchLeader	14.2 s	86.2 s
Context window	BenchLeader	200,000 tokens	1,050,000 tokens
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	86.0%†	93.5%
Humanity's Last Exam	Scale AI / CAIS	25.2%†	–
SimpleBench	SimpleBench	62.0%†	64.8%†
Arena Hard Prompts	Arena (LMArena)	1498†	1512†
LiveBench 1.0 Reasoning	LiveBench	80.1%†	91.7%
GPQA Diamond (AA)	Artificial Analysis	86.6%	94.1%
Humanity's Last Exam (AA)	Artificial Analysis	30.1%	49.5%
GPQA Diamond (Vals)	Vals AI	85.9%	95.2%
EnigmaEval	Scale AI SEAL	–	37.1%†
Kagi LLM Benchmark	Kagi LLM Benchmark	80.2%	67.0%†
ARC-AGI-1	ARC Prize	80.0%	96.5%
ARC-AGI-2	ARC Prize	37.6%	92.5%
ARC-AGI-3	ARC Prize	–	7.8%
CritPt	Artificial Analysis	4.6%	32.3%
CritPt v2 hard subset (AA)	Artificial Analysis	–	56.0%
MysteryMechanism	Vals AI	–	33.3%
SciPredict	Scale AI SEAL	23.1%†	–
Chess Puzzles	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	14.0%†	59.0%
Mystery Game Puzzles	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	22.0%†	58.0%
CL-bench	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	21.1%†	–
LMCA	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	44.5%†	58.4%
DTBench	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	89.9%†	95.5%
ForecastBench	ForecastBench	64.9%†	65.5%
BTF-3	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	–	13.7%
Coding
SWE-bench Verified (Epoch)	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	76.7%†	–

Show all 164 benchmarks

Metric	Publisher	Claude Opus 4.5 (thinking)	GPT-5.6 Sol (max)
Coding
SciCode	SciCode	–	57.1%
WeirdML	WeirdML	63.7%†	87.0%
FrontierCode	Cognition	–	47.5%†
GSO-Bench	GSO-Bench	26.5%†	76.5%†
Arena Coding	Arena (LMArena)	1523†	1534†
Arena WebDev	Arena (LMArena)	1469†	1616†
LiveBench 1.0 Coding	LiveBench	79.7%†	83.9%
LiveCodeBench	Vals AI	83.7%	82.6%
IOI	Vals AI	–	91.2%
SWE-bench (Vals)	Vals AI	76.4%	96.2%
SWE-Bench Pro	Scale AI SEAL	45.9%†	–
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)	SWE-bench	76.8%†	–
SWE-bench Verified (any scaffold)	SWE-bench	79.2%†	–
Code Migration	Vals AI	–	52.9%
ProgramBench	Vals AI	–	1.5%
Vibe Code Bench 1-100	Vals AI	–	20.0%
Vibe Code Bench v1.1	Vals AI	20.6%	80.5%
SWE-Bench Pro (private)	Scale AI SEAL	45.9%†	–
SWE Atlas: Codebase QnA	Scale AI SEAL	–	46.0%†
SWE Atlas: Test Writing	Scale AI SEAL	–	45.9%†
MirrorCode	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	–	20.0%†
Surface Evolver Bench	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	–	93.1%†
DeepSWE v1.1	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	–	72.7%
CursorBench	Cursor	–	41.7%
ALE-Bench	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	1025.4†	2176.9
AlgoTune	AlgoTune	1.8†	–
FrontierSWE	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	–	32.2%
Terminal-Bench 4.0 (AA)	Artificial Analysis	–	39.9%
Terminal-Bench 2.1 (AA)	Artificial Analysis	–	88.0%
Startrise Frontend	Startrise	–	66.2%†
LiveCodeBench (AA)	Artificial Analysis	87.1%	–
Agents & tools
Terminal-Bench	Terminal-Bench	63.1%†	37.3%
OSWorld-Verified 2.0	OSWorld	–	27.3%
GDPval	OpenAI	45.5%†	–
Cybench	Cybench	82.0%†	–
Remote Labor Index	Scale AI / CAIS	3.8%†	–
Arena Agent	Arena (LMArena)	–	6.1†
LiveBench Agentic Coding	LiveBench	39.7%†	56.2%
Terminal-Bench Hard	Artificial Analysis	47.0%	65.9%
τ²-Bench Telecom (AA)	Artificial Analysis	89.5%	85.1%
Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals)	Vals AI	–	85.8%
MCP Atlas	Scale AI SEAL	69.8%†	–
HiL-Bench	Scale AI SEAL	–	32.3%†
BFCL Overall	Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard	77.5%†	–
τ²-bench	τ²-bench	85.3%†	–
τ³-bench Banking	τ²-bench	24.7%†	46.9%†
τ³-Banking (AA)	Artificial Analysis	–	44.3%
ITBench SRE (AA)	Artificial Analysis	–	56.2%
Analyst Agent (AA)	Artificial Analysis	–	47.5%
CUA-bench	Vals AI	–	8.3%
CyberBench	Vals AI	–	76.3%
Finance Agent v2	Vals AI	–	53.8%
Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1	Vals AI	–	2.5%
Legal Research Bench	Vals AI	–	48.1%
Poker Agent	Vals AI	1033.4%†	–
SkillsBench	Vals AI	–	54.1%
SREBench	Vals AI	–	30.5%
Tax Agent Bench	Vals AI	–	31.1%
Terminal-Bench 2.0 (Vals)	Vals AI	53.9%	–
Terminal-Bench 4.0 (Vals)	Vals AI	–	37.9%
Terminal-Bench Science	Vals AI	–	20.0%
Time Horizon Index: KSP	Vals AI	–	23.8%
Web Search Index	Vals AI	–	43.6%
Arena Search	Arena (LMArena)	–	1258†
BALROG	BALROG	43.0%†	60.0%
DeepResearch Bench	DeepResearch Bench	54.8%†	–
PostTrainBench	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	–	36.2%
METR Time Horizons	METR	75.0%†	–
GBAEval	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	–	52.6%†
Vending-Bench 2	Andon Labs	4967.1†	9619.4†
AutomationBench	Artificial Analysis	–	60.1%
GDP.pdf (AA)	Artificial Analysis	–	27.2%
EnterpriseOps-Gym	Artificial Analysis	–	42.9%
AA-Briefcase v1.1	Artificial Analysis	–	1478
Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 (AA)	Artificial Analysis	–	22.4%
DeepSearchQA	Google	24.0%	–
FACTS Search	Google	–	88.5%†
Maths
FrontierMath Tiers 1–3	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	34.4%†	89.1%
FrontierMath Tier 4	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	4.9%†	82.9%
OTIS Mock AIME	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	86.1%†	100.0%
ProofBench	Vals AI	36.0%†	83.0%
LiveBench Mathematics	LiveBench	90.4%†	96.2%
AIME (Vals)	Vals AI	95.4%	–
MGSM	Vals AI	95.2%	–
Arena Maths	Arena (LMArena)	1463†	1496†
Knowledge
SimpleQA Verified	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	45.7%†	69.7%
LiveBench 1.0 Data Analysis	LiveBench	74.4%†	79.8%
MMLU-Pro	Vals AI	87.3%	89.1%
LegalBench	Vals AI	84.6%	87.0%
CorpFin	Vals AI	65.1%	64.4%
TaxEval	Vals AI	74.9%	74.8%
MedQA	Vals AI	95.9%	–
PRBench Finance	Scale AI SEAL	46.2%	50.5%
PRBench Legal	Scale AI SEAL	44.2%	50.5%
MultiNRC	Scale AI SEAL	48.6%	–
BioMysteryBench	Vals AI	–	71.1%
CaseLaw v2	Vals AI	62.6%	–
Excel Modeling Benchmark	Vals AI	–	72.3%
MedCode	Vals AI	49.2%	44.0%
MedScribe	Vals AI	85.3%	85.2%
Public Benefits Bench v1.1	Vals AI	–	66.5%
DrugDiscoveryBench	Scale AI SEAL	–	56.5%
EBR-bench	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	14.3%†	44.8%
GDP.pdf	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	–	30.7%
Global-MMLU-Lite (AA)	Artificial Analysis	91.3%	–
Instruction following
LiveBench Language	LiveBench	81.3%†	87.7%
LiveBench Instruction Following	LiveBench	62.5%†	71.8%
IFBench	Artificial Analysis	58.0%	72.7%
MultiChallenge	Scale AI SEAL	59.0%	–
TutorBench	Scale AI SEAL	51.2%	–
Arena Instruction Following	Arena (LMArena)	1474†	1491†
Human preference
Arena Text	Arena (LMArena)	1470†	1485†
EQ-Bench 4	EQ-Bench	–	1236†
Arena Creative Writing	Arena (LMArena)	1462†	1470†
Arena Multi-turn	Arena (LMArena)	1484†	1490†
Arena Longer Queries	Arena (LMArena)	1492†	1499†
Multimodal
Arena Vision	Arena (LMArena)	–	1281†
MMMU-Pro	Artificial Analysis	74.0%	83.4%
VISTA	Scale AI SEAL	46.4%	–
MMMU (validation)	MMMU	80.7%†	–
MMMU-Pro (official)	MMMU	73.9%†	–
MMMU-Pro (Vals)	Vals AI	83.0%	88.8%
MortgageTax	Vals AI	67.7%	67.3%
GeoBench	GeoBench	75.0%†	–
VPCT	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	40.0%†	–
Blueprint-Bench 2	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	–	33.6%†
Long context
AA-LCR v1.1	Artificial Analysis	77.3%	84.0%
Arena Document	Arena (LMArena)	1465†	1489†
MLCR	Artificial Analysis	–	30.0%
Composite
Epoch Capabilities Index	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	150.1†	162.8†
LiveBench 1.0	LiveBench	72.6%†	81.0%
AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2	Artificial Analysis	29.1	47.0
AA Progress Index v1	Artificial Analysis	284.4	331.5
Vals RSI Index	Vals AI	14.8%†	23.9%
Vals Science Index	Vals AI	–	41.5%
Vals Multimodal Index	Vals AI	–	72.6%
Safety & honesty
FORTRESS	Scale AI SEAL	9.6%	20.1%†
MASK	Scale AI SEAL	92.5%	–
Metadata
AA Openness Index	Artificial Analysis	11.1	–

Data as of 2026-10-29. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.

What changed

28 Oct 2026 Claude Opus 4.5 (thinking): BenchLeader Index 60.1 → 59.6.
28 Oct 2026 Claude Opus 4.5 (thinking): 1 new result (AA Progress Index v1).
28 Oct 2026 GPT-5.6 Sol (max): 2 new results (AA Progress Index v1, CritPt v2 hard subset (AA)).
25 Oct 2026 Claude Opus 4.5 (thinking): 1 new result (Global-MMLU-Lite (AA)).
25 Oct 2026 GPT-5.6 Sol (max): 1 new result (AA-Briefcase v1.1).
23 Oct 2026 GPT-5.6 Sol (max): 3 new results (Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1, Vals RSI Index, Vals Science Index).
21 Oct 2026 GPT-5.6 Sol (max): 1 score revision.
20 Oct 2026 GPT-5.6 Sol (max): 1 new result (ForecastBench).
18 Oct 2026 GPT-5.6 Sol (max): 5 new results (AutomationBench, GDP.pdf (AA), MLCR…).
16 Oct 2026 GPT-5.6 Sol (max): 1 score revision.

Rankings: Best LLM overall · Best LLM for agents · Best cheap LLMs