Side-by-side benchmark comparison across knowledge, coding, math, and reasoning.
o3-mini has the cleaner overall profile here, landing at 56 versus 53. It is a real lead, but still close enough that category-level strengths matter more than the headline number.
o3-mini's sharpest advantage is in knowledge, where it averages 82.1 against 50.2. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SWE-bench Verified, 49.3 to 10.
o3-mini is the reasoning model in the pair, while Claude 3 Opus is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use.
Pick o3-mini if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude 3 Opus only becomes the better choice if you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.
o3-mini
82.1
Claude 3 Opus
50.2
o3-mini
49.3
Claude 3 Opus
27.7
o3-mini
87.3
Claude 3 Opus
61.6
o3-mini
93.9
Claude 3 Opus
77
o3-mini is ahead overall, 56 to 53. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Verified, where the scores are 49.3 and 10.
o3-mini has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 82.1 versus 50.2. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
o3-mini has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 49.3 versus 27.7. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
o3-mini has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 87.3 versus 61.6. Inside this category, AIME 2024 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
o3-mini has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 93.9 versus 77. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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