Claude Opus 4.6 vs GPT-5

In our 12-test suite Claude Opus 4.6 and GPT-5 tie on many core capabilities but split the clear wins. Ties (both score 5): strategic_analysis (both tied for 1st), tool_calling (both tied for 1st), faithfulness (both tied for 1st), long_context (both tied for 1st), persona_consistency (both tied for 1st), agentic_planning (both tied for 1st), and multilingual (both tied for 1st). Claude wins creative_problem_solving 5 vs 4 and safety_calibration 5 vs 2 — Claude ranks tied-1st on creative problem solving and tied-1st on safety_calibration in our rankings, meaning it produces more novel, feasible ideas and better refusal/permit behavior in our tests. GPT-5 wins structured_output 5 vs 4, constrained_rewriting 4 vs 3, and classification 4 vs 3 — GPT-5 is tied for 1st in structured_output and ranks higher on constrained rewriting and classification, so it better follows JSON/schema constraints and tight character limits in our tasks. External benchmarks (Epoch AI): on SWE-bench Verified Claude scores 78.7% vs GPT-5 73.6% (Claude ranks 1/12 on that benchmark; GPT-5 ranks 6/12), indicating stronger real-world code-fix performance in that dataset. On math tests GPT-5 posts 98.1% on MATH Level 5 (rank 1/14, Epoch AI) while Claude lacks a MATH Level 5 score in our payload; on AIME 2025 Claude scores 94.4% (rank 4/23) vs GPT-5 91.4% (rank 6/23). Rankings context: Claude is sole #1 on SWE-bench Verified in our tests and ranks top-tier across many categories, while GPT-5 leads structured output and math benchmarks and ties for many other core skills. Practically: choose Claude when safety, creative ideation, and SWE-bench coding are mission-critical; choose GPT-5 when strict schema compliance, constrained rewriting, classification, math contest strength, and cost-efficiency matter.

Raw per-mTok costs (input+output): Claude Opus 4.6 = $5 + $25 = $30.00 per mTok; GPT-5 = $1.25 + $10 = $11.25 per mTok. At 1M tokens (1000 mTok) monthly: Claude ≈ $30,000 vs GPT-5 ≈ $11,250. At 10M tokens: Claude ≈ $300,000 vs GPT-5 ≈ $112,500. At 100M tokens: Claude ≈ $3,000,000 vs GPT-5 ≈ $1,125,000. Teams at scale (10M+ tokens/mo) will see six-figure differences; startups, high-volume APIs, and inference-heavy SaaS should prefer GPT-5 for cost efficiency unless Claude’s specific strengths justify the premium.

Choose Claude Opus 4.6 if you need: high safety calibration, top-tier creative problem solving, the strongest SWE-bench Verified coding signal (78.7% Epoch AI), or extremely large context (1,000,000 token window) and you can absorb much higher costs. Choose GPT-5 if you need: lower cost per token (combined $11.25/mTok), best-in-class structured output and constrained rewriting, leading math performance (98.1% on MATH Level 5, Epoch AI), and the best price-to-performance for production-scale usage.