Is Claude Opus 4.8 better than GPT-5.4?

Claude Opus 4.8 (max) and GPT-5.4 (xhigh) are neck and neck on quality (63.3 vs 64.7, within the ±5.5 margin). The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; the two are within the margin of error as of 2026-10-25, so check the category scores for your use.

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.8 or GPT-5.4, and will that change?

GPT-5.4 is cheaper today: $5.63 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 4.8 better than GPT-5.4 for coding?

GPT-5.4 scores higher in coding (65 vs 59 on the category index, where 50 is average). On SciCode, the top shared coding benchmark, it is 53.5% for Claude Opus 4.8 against 56.6% for GPT-5.4.

Is Claude Opus 4.8 better than GPT-5.4 for agents and tool use?

GPT-5.4 scores higher in agentic tasks (64 vs 57 on the category index, where 50 is average). On MCP Atlas, the top shared agents & tools benchmark, it is 82.2% for Claude Opus 4.8 against 70.6% for GPT-5.4.

Which is better for long documents?

GPT-5.4 scores higher on long-context benchmarks (66 vs 64). Both take about 1.1M tokens: Claude Opus 4.8 1,000,000, GPT-5.4 1,050,000.

Which has lower latency?

Claude Opus 4.8 (max) answers first: 29.3 s against 118.0 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.

Which is faster, Claude Opus 4.8 or GPT-5.4?

GPT-5.4 streams faster: 96 against 63 output tokens per second.

When was Claude Opus 4.8 released?

Claude Opus 4.8 was released on 28 May 2026.

Claude Opus 4.8 vs GPT-5.4

Full profiles: Claude Opus 4.8 (Anthropic) and GPT-5.4 (OpenAI): every benchmark, price and rank.

Updated 25 Oct 2026 · Data from 11 sources

As of 25 Oct 2026, Claude Opus 4.8 (max) and GPT-5.4 (xhigh) are neck and neck on quality (63.3 vs 64.7 on the BenchLeader Index, inside the ±5.5 margin of error), and GPT-5.4 (xhigh) costs 1.8× less, which makes it the better buy for most workloads. Pick Claude Opus 4.8 for knowledge (67 vs 60); pick GPT-5.4 for instruction following (72 vs 62).

Claude Opus 4.8 benchmarks max Anthropic

GPT-5.4 benchmarks xhigh 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-5.4	65 vs 59 category score; SciCode 56.6% vs 53.5%	Medium
Agents & tool use	GPT-5.4	64 vs 57 category score; τ³-Banking (AA) 39.6% vs 34.2%	Medium
Maths	Claude Opus 4.8	68 vs 65 category score; FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 80.0% vs 78.6%	Medium
Reasoning	Either	69 vs 69 category score; GPQA Diamond 91.0% vs 93.3%	Either
Knowledge	Claude Opus 4.8	67 vs 60 category score; SimpleQA Verified 53.0% vs 45.1%	Medium
Long documents	GPT-5.4	66 vs 64 category score; AA-LCR 82.0% vs 77.7%	Medium
Following instructions	GPT-5.4	72 vs 62 category score; IFBench 74.0% vs 62.2%	High
Lowest cost	GPT-5.4	$5.63 vs $10.00 per 1M blended; agentic coding session $0.210 vs $0.400	–
Fastest first answer	Claude Opus 4.8	29.3 s (Claude Opus 4.8 (max)) vs 118.0 s (GPT-5.4 (xhigh)) 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

Claude Opus 4.8 (max) and GPT-5.4 (xhigh) are neck and neck on quality (63.3 vs 64.7, within the ±5.5 margin).
Claude Opus 4.8 (max) is stronger in composite, knowledge, maths.
GPT-5.4 (xhigh) is stronger in agents & tools, coding, instruction following, long context, reasoning, multimodal.
GPT-5.4 (xhigh) is 1.8× cheaper ($5.63 vs $10.00 per 1M blended).
GPT-5.4 (xhigh) streams 1.5× faster (96 vs 63 tokens per second).

At a glance

Spec	Claude Opus 4.8	GPT-5.4
Developer	Anthropic	OpenAI
Released	28 May 2026	5 Mar 2026
Context window (tokens)	1,000,000	1,050,000
Compared at	Claude Opus 4.8 (max)	GPT-5.4 (xhigh)
Open weights	No	No
Price in / out / cached input per 1M	$5.00 / $25.00 / $0.500	$2.50 / $15.00 / $0.250

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 4.8 (max)	GPT-5.4 (xhigh)	Leader
Reasoning	68.8	69.1	level
Coding	58.9	64.6	GPT-5.4
Agents & tools	56.5	63.6	GPT-5.4
Maths	68.1	65.2	Claude Opus 4.8
Knowledge	66.9	59.7	Claude Opus 4.8
Instruction following	62.1	72.3	GPT-5.4
Multimodal	–	61.4	not comparable
Long context	63.8	66.1	GPT-5.4
Composite	76.2	73.1	Claude Opus 4.8

Where sources disagree

Across the 40 benchmarks both have, Claude Opus 4.8 leads 25, GPT-5.4 leads 14 and 1 is a tie. Every overall index that rates both puts Claude Opus 4.8 ahead.

Overall index	Claude Opus 4.8 (max)	GPT-5.4 (xhigh)	Leader
BenchLeader Index	63.3	64.7	neck and neck
AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2	41.8	39.0	Claude Opus 4.8
Arena Text	1482†	1475	Claude Opus 4.8

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 4.8 (max)	GPT-5.4 (xhigh)
Blended price per 1M tokens	$10.00	$5.63
Input / output per 1M	$5.00 / $25.00	$2.50 / $15.00
Cached input per 1M	$0.500	$0.250
Price per task: chat reply	$0.0095	$0.0055
Price per task: summarize a 30-page report	$0.075	$0.039
Price per task: code edit	$0.068	$0.037
Price per task: agentic coding session	$0.400	$0.210
Price per task: structured extraction	$0.015	$0.0080
Cost to run a full benchmark suite	$4.08	–
Output speed	63 tok/s	96 tok/s
Time to first answer	29.3 s	118.0 s
Time to a complete answer	37.2 s	123.2 s

Each model is compared at its best-ranked reasoning-effort setting. Claude Opus 4.8 (max) scores 63.3 and takes 29 s to its first answer token; Claude Opus 4.8 (high) scores 60.7 in 1 s, Claude Opus 4.8 scores 60.1 in 1 s. GPT-5.4 (xhigh) scores 64.7 and takes 118 s to its first answer token; GPT-5.4 (low) scores 59.7 in 2 s, GPT-5.4 (high) scores 58.9 in 1 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

150 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 4.8 (max)	GPT-5.4 (xhigh)
BenchLeader Index	BenchLeader	63.3	64.7
Agents & tools score	BenchLeader	56.5	63.6
Coding score	BenchLeader	58.9	64.6
Composite score	BenchLeader	76.2	73.1
Instruction following score	BenchLeader	62.1	72.3
Knowledge score	BenchLeader	66.9	59.7
Long context score	BenchLeader	63.8	66.1
Maths score	BenchLeader	68.1	65.2
Reasoning score	BenchLeader	68.8	69.1
Multimodal score	BenchLeader	–	61.4
Blended price $/M	BenchLeader	$10.00	$5.63
Output speed	BenchLeader	63 tok/s	96 tok/s
Time to first answer	BenchLeader	29.3 s	118.0 s
Context window	BenchLeader	1,000,000 tokens	1,050,000 tokens
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	91.0%	93.3%
Humanity's Last Exam	Scale AI / CAIS	–	36.2%
SimpleBench	SimpleBench	64.8%†	–
Arena Hard Prompts	Arena (LMArena)	1505†	1487†
LiveBench 2.0 Reasoning	LiveBench	89.2%†	–
LiveBench 1.0 Reasoning	LiveBench	89.2%	88.1%
GPQA Diamond (AA)	Artificial Analysis	92.0%	92.0%
Humanity's Last Exam (AA)	Artificial Analysis	48.7%	43.7%
GPQA Diamond (Vals)	Vals AI	92.4%†	91.7%
EnigmaEval	Scale AI SEAL	23.5%†	–
Kagi LLM Benchmark	Kagi LLM Benchmark	88.8%†	63.8%†
ARC-AGI-1	ARC Prize	92.5%	93.7%
ARC-AGI-2	ARC Prize	72.1%†	74.0%
ARC-AGI-3	ARC Prize	1.5%†	0.2%†
CritPt	Artificial Analysis	20.9%	23.4%
Chess Puzzles	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	52.0%	48.0%
Mystery Game Puzzles	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	36.0%	37.0%
CL-bench	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	–	27.9%
CL-bench Life	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	–	21.7%
LMCA	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	57.5%	52.0%
DTBench	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	94.9%	94.4%
ForecastBench	ForecastBench	66.3%	63.1%†
BTF-3	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	14.0%†	–
Coding
SWE-bench Verified (Epoch)	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	–	76.9%†
SciCode	SciCode	53.5%	56.6%

Show all 150 benchmarks

Metric	Publisher	Claude Opus 4.8 (max)	GPT-5.4 (xhigh)
Coding
WeirdML	WeirdML	70.5%†	77.7%
FrontierCode	Cognition	46.5%†	–
GSO-Bench	GSO-Bench	47.1%†	31.4%
Arena Coding	Arena (LMArena)	1529†	1511†
Arena WebDev	Arena (LMArena)	1536†	1401†
LiveBench 2.0 Coding	LiveBench	77.3%†	–
LiveBench 1.0 Coding	LiveBench	81.8%	77.5%
SciCode (AA)	Artificial Analysis	54.4%	–
LiveCodeBench	Vals AI	87.8%†	84.1%
SWE-bench (Vals)	Vals AI	88.6%†	78.2%
SWE-Bench Pro	Scale AI SEAL	–	59.1%
Code Migration	Vals AI	47.3%†	35.0%
ProgramBench	Vals AI	1.0%†	0.0%
Vibe Code Bench v1.1	Vals AI	82.7%†	67.4%
SWE-Bench Pro (private)	Scale AI SEAL	–	59.1%
SWE Atlas: Codebase QnA	Scale AI SEAL	57.3%†	40.8%
SWE Atlas: Refactoring	Scale AI SEAL	46.7%†	44.3%
SWE Atlas: Test Writing	Scale AI SEAL	49.6%†	44.4%
MirrorCode	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	–	15.6%†
Surface Evolver Bench	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	87.5%†	–
DeepSWE v1.1	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	59.0%	51.8%
ALE-Bench	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	1563.8†	1607†
AlgoTune	AlgoTune	–	1.9†
Terminal-Bench 4.0 (AA)	Artificial Analysis	21.7%	–
Terminal-Bench 2.1 (AA)	Artificial Analysis	84.6%	78.3%
Agents & tools
Terminal-Bench	Terminal-Bench	23.6%	81.8%†
OSWorld-Verified 2.0	OSWorld	20.6%	–
Remote Labor Index	Scale AI / CAIS	8.3%†	–
APEX-Agents	Mercor	48.9%	52.4%†
LiveBench Long Agentic	LiveBench	48.3%†	–
LiveBench Browser	LiveBench	96.0%†	–
LiveBench Agentic Coding	LiveBench	50.5%	53.8%
Terminal-Bench Hard	Artificial Analysis	58.3%	57.6%
τ²-Bench Telecom (AA)	Artificial Analysis	94.4%	87.1%
Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals)	Vals AI	71.9%†	–
MCP Atlas	Scale AI SEAL	82.2%	70.6%
HiL-Bench	Scale AI SEAL	35.3%†	9.7%†
τ³-bench Banking	τ²-bench	39.7%	39.4%
τ³-Banking (AA)	Artificial Analysis	34.2%	39.6%
Analyst Agent (AA)	Artificial Analysis	45.0%	–
APEX-Agents (AA)	Artificial Analysis	–	33.3%
Finance Agent v2	Vals AI	53.9%†	–
Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1	Vals AI	9.6%†	0.0%
Legal Research Bench	Vals AI	43.8%†	–
SkillsBench	Vals AI	59.2%†	51.7%
Tax Agent Bench	Vals AI	30.0%†	–
Terminal-Bench 2.0 (Vals)	Vals AI	70.0%†	58.4%†
Terminal-Bench 4.0 (Vals)	Vals AI	23.2%†	–
Terminal-Bench Science	Vals AI	4.3%†	–
Time Horizon Index: KSP	Vals AI	11.8%†	–
Arena Search	Arena (LMArena)	1195†	–
DeepResearch Bench	DeepResearch Bench	50.2%†	35.1%†
PostTrainBench	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	32.9%	19.0%†
METR Time Horizons	METR	–	74.3%
GBAEval	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	70.9%†	45.1%†
Vending-Bench 2	Andon Labs	2992.3	6144.2†
AutomationBench	Artificial Analysis	45.6%	–
GDP.pdf (AA)	Artificial Analysis	22.8%	–
EnterpriseOps-Gym	Artificial Analysis	44.0%	–
AA-Briefcase v1.1	Artificial Analysis	1319	–
DeepSearchQA	Google	–	63.7%†
FACTS Search	Google	79.6%†	–
Maths
FrontierMath Tiers 1–3	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	80.0%	78.6%
FrontierMath Tier 4	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	56.1%	49.0%
OTIS Mock AIME	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	98.3%	95.3%
ProofBench	Vals AI	69.0%	56.0%
LiveBench Mathematics	LiveBench	94.3%	94.2%
AIME (Vals)	Vals AI	–	96.7%
AIME 2026	MathArena	100.0%	99.2%
HMMT February 2026	MathArena	95.5%	97.7%
USAMO 2026	MathArena	–	95.2%
MathArena Apex	MathArena	81.3%	54.2%
Arena Maths	Arena (LMArena)	1477†	1460†
Knowledge
SimpleQA Verified	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	53.0%	45.1%
LiveBench 2.0 Data Analysis	LiveBench	66.0%†	–
LiveBench Research	LiveBench	81.8%†	–
LiveBench 1.0 Data Analysis	LiveBench	66.0%	79.3%
AA-Omniscience	Artificial Analysis	28.8	5.8
MMLU-Pro	Vals AI	89.6%†	87.5%
LegalBench	Vals AI	83.6%†	86.0%
CorpFin	Vals AI	66.7%†	65.3%
TaxEval	Vals AI	75.6%†	74.0%
MedQA	Vals AI	–	96.1%
PRBench Finance	Scale AI SEAL	–	45.6%†
PRBench Legal	Scale AI SEAL	–	44.4%†
MultiNRC	Scale AI SEAL	–	58.3%†
CaseLaw v2	Vals AI	–	63.8%
Excel Modeling Benchmark	Vals AI	69.4%†	–
MedCode	Vals AI	53.2%†	41.3%
MedScribe	Vals AI	85.8%†	77.5%
Public Benefits Bench v1.1	Vals AI	68.1%†	–
DrugDiscoveryBench	Scale AI SEAL	46.8%	–
EBR-bench	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	28.6%	25.4%
GDP.pdf	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	24.0%	–
AA-Omniscience: accuracy	Artificial Analysis	48.8%	50.9%
AA-Omniscience: non-hallucination	Artificial Analysis	60.8%	8.3%
Instruction following
LiveBench Language	LiveBench	79.7%	82.6%
LiveBench Instruction Following	LiveBench	72.0%	70.2%
IFBench	Artificial Analysis	62.2%	74.0%
Arena Instruction Following	Arena (LMArena)	1478†	1460†
Human preference
Arena Text	Arena (LMArena)	1474†	1465†
EQ-Bench 4	EQ-Bench	1267†	1260†
Arena Creative Writing	Arena (LMArena)	1463†	1435†
Arena Multi-turn	Arena (LMArena)	1495†	1480†
Arena Longer Queries	Arena (LMArena)	1499†	1477†
Multimodal
Arena Vision	Arena (LMArena)	1289†	1292†
LiveBench Design	LiveBench	78.8%†	–
MMMU-Pro	Artificial Analysis	–	78.4%
VISTA	Scale AI SEAL	–	50.9%†
MMMU-Pro (Vals)	Vals AI	86.6%†	87.5%
MortgageTax	Vals AI	69.9%†	68.3%
SAGE	Vals AI	54.8%†	43.3%
VTB	Scale AI SEAL	–	29.2%†
Blueprint-Bench 2	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	14.5%†	27.1%†
Long context
AA-LCR	Artificial Analysis	77.7%	82.0%
Arena Document	Arena (LMArena)	1475†	1470†
MLCR	Artificial Analysis	19.4%	–
Composite
Epoch Capabilities Index	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	159.0†	157.3†
LiveBench 2.0	LiveBench	76.8%†	–
LiveBench 1.0	LiveBench	76.2%	78.0%
AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2	Artificial Analysis	41.8	39.0
Vals RSI Index	Vals AI	24.0%	15.5%
Vals Multimodal Index	Vals AI	70.9%†	–
Safety & honesty
FORTRESS	Scale AI SEAL	18.2%	–
MASK	Scale AI SEAL	–	89.7%†

Data as of 2026-10-25. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.

What changed

25 Oct 2026 Claude Opus 4.8 (max): 1 new result (AA-Briefcase v1.1).
23 Oct 2026 Claude Opus 4.8 (max): 1 new result (Vals RSI Index).
23 Oct 2026 GPT-5.4 (xhigh): 2 new results (Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1, Vals RSI Index).
21 Oct 2026 Claude Opus 4.8 (max): 1 score revision.
20 Oct 2026 Claude Opus 4.8 (max): 1 new result (ForecastBench).
19 Oct 2026 Claude Opus 4.8 (max): BenchLeader Index 62.5 → 63.4.
18 Oct 2026 Claude Opus 4.8 (max): 5 new results (AutomationBench, GDP.pdf (AA), MLCR…).
18 Oct 2026 GPT-5.4 (xhigh): 2 new results (USAMO 2026, τ³-bench Banking).
15 Oct 2026 Claude Opus 4.8 (max): 1 score revision.
15 Oct 2026 GPT-5.4 (xhigh): 1 score revision.

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