Claude Sonnet 5 vs GPT-5
Claude Sonnet 5 
GPT-5 Verdict
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high) and GPT-5 are level on quality (61.3 vs 60.8).
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high) is stronger in agents & tools, coding, composite, human preference, knowledge, multimodal, reasoning.
- GPT-5 is stronger in long context, instruction following, maths.
- GPT-5 is 1.2× cheaper ($3.44 vs $4.00 per 1M blended).
- GPT-5 streams 1.4× faster (85 vs 61 tokens per second).
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (high) | GPT-5 |
|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 61.3 | 60.8 |
| Agents & tools score | 60.8 | 51.0 |
| Coding score | 61.5 | 60.9 |
| Composite score | 69.5 | 58.1 |
| Human preference score | 65.9 | 61.7 |
| Knowledge score | 62.5 | 62.2 |
| Long context score | 64.8 | 65.6 |
| Multimodal score | 63.1 | 59.6 |
| Reasoning score | 66.5 | 64.2 |
| Instruction following score | – | 65.0 |
| Maths score | – | 72.8 |
| Blended price $/M | $4.00 | $3.44 |
| Output speed | 61 tok/s | 85 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 2.0 s | 60.7 s |
| Context window | 1M | 400k |
| Terminal-Bench | – | 49.6% |
| SciCode | 48.6% | 42.9% |
| Remote Labor Index | – | 1.7% |
| WeirdML | 68.8% | 39.8% |
| APEX-Agents | – | 18.3% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | – | 150 |
| LMArena Text | 1461 | 1427 |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1488 | 1449 |
| LMArena Coding | 1521 | 1462 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1537 | – |
| LMArena Vision | 1278 | 1232 |
| LMArena Agent | 5.9 | – |
| AA Intelligence Index | 32.0 | 23.0 |
| IFBench | – | 73.1% |
| AA-LCR | 76.7% | 78.2% |
| MMMU-Pro | – | 74.2% |
| AA-Omniscience | -3.7 | -8.7 |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | – | 32.6% |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | – | 85.3% |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | 35.7% | 28.5% |
| SciCode (AA) | 54.3% | – |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | – | 84.8% |
| PRBench Finance | – | 51.3% |
| PRBench Legal | – | 49.0% |
| VISTA | – | 49.7% |
| MultiNRC | – | 52.1% |
| TutorBench | – | 55.3% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | – | 72.7% |
| IFEval (HELM) | – | 87.5% |
| Omni-MATH (HELM) | – | 64.7% |
| WildBench (HELM) | – | 85.7% |
| MMLU-Pro (HELM) | – | 86.3% |
| GPQA Diamond (HELM) | – | 79.1% |
| HELM Capabilities mean | – | 80.7% |
| Aider Polyglot | – | 88.0% |
| SWE-bench Verified (any scaffold) | – | 75.6% |
Data as of 2026-09-12. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
Claude Sonnet 5 vs GPT-5: questions
- Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than GPT-5?
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high) and GPT-5 are level on quality (61.3 vs 60.8). The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Claude Sonnet 5 (high) is ahead overall as of 2026-09-12, but check the category scores for your use.
- Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than GPT-5 for coding?
- Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher in coding (62 vs 61 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than GPT-5 for agentic tasks?
- Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher in agentic tasks (61 vs 51 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5 or GPT-5?
- GPT-5 is cheaper: $3.44 against $4.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token.
- Which is faster, Claude Sonnet 5 or GPT-5?
- GPT-5 streams faster: 85 against 61 output tokens per second.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Claude Sonnet 5 accepts more context: 1M against 400k tokens.