Claude Opus 4.6 vs GPT-5.4 head-to-head: benchmark scores, pricing, and when to use each. GPT-5.4 leads on 16 of 20 benchmarks at 6x lower cost. But Claude holds real advantages in some areas.
GPT-5.4 outperforms Claude Opus 4.6 on 16 of 20 benchmarks tracked by BenchLM.ai — and costs 6x less per input token. The overall scores are 90 vs 85. That gap is meaningful, not noise.
Claude Opus 4.6 still has real strengths. It ties GPT-5.4 on multilingual and multimodal visual tasks. Its Arena Elo (1422 vs 1454) reflects close user preference on conversational tasks. For writing-heavy workflows where style and tone matter, Claude's reputation holds up.
But on raw benchmark performance, this comparison is not close. GPT-5.4 wins on knowledge, coding, reasoning, math, instruction following, and agentic tasks — all while costing a fraction of the price.
| Benchmark | GPT-5.4 | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 90 | 85 | +5 GPT |
| Arena Elo | 1454 | 1422 | +32 GPT |
| Knowledge | |||
| HLE | 48 | 38 | +10 GPT |
| GPQA Diamond | 98 | 97 | +1 GPT |
| MMLU-Pro | 93 | 92 | +1 GPT |
| SuperGPQA | 96 | 95 | +1 GPT |
| Coding | |||
| SWE-bench Pro | 85 | 74 | +11 GPT |
| SWE-bench Verified | 84 | 80 | +4 GPT |
| LiveCodeBench | 84 | 75 | +9 GPT |
| HumanEval | 95 | 91 | +4 GPT |
| Agentic | |||
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 90 | 80 | +10 GPT |
| OSWorld-Verified | 85 | 74 | +11 GPT |
| BrowseComp | 88 | 85 | +3 GPT |
| Reasoning | |||
| SimpleQA | 97 | 95 | +2 GPT |
| MuSR | 94 | 93 | +1 GPT |
| BBH | 97 | 94 | +3 GPT |
| LongBench v2 | 95 | 92 | +3 GPT |
| MRCR v2 | 97 | 92 | +5 GPT |
| Instruction Following | |||
| IFEval | 96 | 95 | +1 GPT |
| Multilingual | |||
| MGSM | 96 | 96 | Tie |
| MMLU-Pro-X | 94 | 94 | Tie |
| Multimodal | |||
| MMMU-Pro | 95 | 95 | Tie |
| OfficeQA-Pro | 96 | 94 | +2 GPT |
Source: BenchLM.ai leaderboard. Scores as of March 2026.
| GPT-5.4 | Claude Opus 4.6 | Ratio | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input (per million tokens) | $2.50 | $15.00 | 6x more expensive |
| Output (per million tokens) | $15.00 | $75.00 | 5x more expensive |
At 1M output tokens per month: GPT-5.4 costs $15, Claude Opus 4.6 costs $75. At 10M output tokens per month: GPT-5.4 costs $150, Claude Opus 4.6 costs $750.
The pricing gap compounds the benchmark gap. GPT-5.4 is better and cheaper by a substantial margin. This is an unusual situation — usually the best-performing model also commands the highest price.
Biggest GPT-5.4 advantages (5+ points):
Effectively tied (2 points or less):
The pattern is clear: GPT-5.4 leads meaningfully on applied, task-completion benchmarks (coding, agentic, hard research). The two models are effectively equal on knowledge recall and multilingual tasks once you get past HLE.
The benchmark data is decisive in GPT-5.4's favor, but benchmarks don't capture everything.
Claude's actual advantages in practice:
Writing style and voice. Claude is widely preferred for long-form writing, creative tasks, and brand-sensitive content. Arena Elo captures some of this preference, but qualitative writing quality doesn't reduce neatly to benchmarks. If you're generating customer-facing content where tone matters, Claude's style is a legitimate reason to choose it.
Anthropic's trust and safety posture. Some enterprise use cases require the safety and compliance profile Anthropic provides. Claude Opus 4.6 has a specific Constitutional AI training approach that some regulated industries prefer for its auditability.
API ecosystem. Claude has good support in tools like Cursor, Notion AI, and others. If your stack is already Claude-native, switching to GPT-5.4 may require integration work that erases the cost savings.
Multimodal parity. For image understanding and document analysis tasks (MMMU-Pro: 95 vs 95), Claude Opus 4.6 performs identically to GPT-5.4. If your workload is primarily visual document processing, you're not giving anything up.
If you're already in the Claude ecosystem, Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Sonnet 4.6 is often the more relevant comparison.
| Claude Opus 4.6 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | |
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $15/M | $3/M |
| Output price | $75/M | $15/M |
| Overall score | 85 | 78 |
| SWE-bench Pro | 74 | 64 |
| IFEval | 95 | — |
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is 5x cheaper and 7 overall points lower. For most workloads that don't require Opus-level reasoning — summarization, classification, structured output, straightforward Q&A — Sonnet is the right choice. Opus is for the tasks where that 7-point gap actually shows up.
Use GPT-5.4 if: you want the best benchmark performance at the lowest price point in the frontier tier. It leads Claude Opus 4.6 on 16 of 20 benchmarks and costs 6x less on input. The default choice for most new AI workloads.
Use Claude Opus 4.6 if: you're in the Claude ecosystem and need Anthropic's trust/compliance profile, or if writing style and voice are primary requirements. Not the choice if coding, agents, or cost efficiency are your priorities.
Use Claude Sonnet 4.6 if: you want Claude-specific advantages at a price that actually competes with GPT-5.4. At $3/$15, Sonnet 4.6 is on the same pricing tier as GPT-5.4.
→ Full comparison table · Coding leaderboard · Overall rankings
Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than GPT-5.4? No. GPT-5.4 scores 90 overall vs Claude Opus 4.6's 85, and leads on 16 of 20 benchmarks at 6x lower input cost.
Where does Claude Opus 4.6 beat GPT-5.4? Multilingual tasks (tied) and multimodal visual understanding (tied at MMMU-Pro 95). Marginal advantages in BrowseComp. Stronger in qualitative writing style by user preference.
How much does Claude Opus 4.6 cost compared to GPT-5.4? Claude Opus 4.6: $15/$75 per million tokens. GPT-5.4: $2.50/$15. Claude Opus is 6x more expensive on input and 5x more expensive on output.
Should I use Claude Opus or Claude Sonnet? Claude Sonnet 4.6 ($3/$15) for most workloads — 5x cheaper with 7 fewer overall points. Opus is for tasks where you specifically need its reasoning headroom.
What's the best model for coding in 2026? GPT-5.3 Codex ($2.50/$10, SWE-bench Pro 90) for the best coding performance per dollar. See the full coding breakdown.
All benchmark data from BenchLM.ai. Prices per million tokens, current as of March 2026.
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