Claude Opus 4.5 vs GPT-5 nano

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across knowledge, coding, math, and reasoning.

Claude Opus 4.5 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 85 to 31. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Claude Opus 4.5's sharpest advantage is in mathematics, where it averages 96.1 against 85.2. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is GPQA, 97 to 71.2.

GPT-5 nano is the reasoning model in the pair, while Claude Opus 4.5 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. GPT-5 nano gives you the larger context window at 400K, compared with 200K for Claude Opus 4.5.

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Opus 4.5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. GPT-5 nano only becomes the better choice if you need the larger 400K context window or you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.

Knowledge

Claude Opus 4.5

Claude Opus 4.5

80.8

GPT-5 nano

71.2

99
MMLU
-
97
GPQA
71.2
95
SuperGPQA
-
93
OpenBookQA
-
81
MMLU-Pro
-
20
HLE
-

Coding

Claude Opus 4.5
91
HumanEval
-
68
SWE-bench Verified
-
57
LiveCodeBench
-

Mathematics

Claude Opus 4.5

Claude Opus 4.5

96.1

GPT-5 nano

85.2

99
AIME 2023
-
99
AIME 2024
-
98
AIME 2025
85.2
95
HMMT Feb 2023
-
97
HMMT Feb 2024
-
96
HMMT Feb 2025
-
96
BRUMO 2025
-
89
MATH-500
-

Reasoning

Claude Opus 4.5
95
SimpleQA
-
93
MuSR
-
87
BBH
-

Instruction Following

Claude Opus 4.5
90
IFEval
-

Multilingual

Claude Opus 4.5
90
MGSM
-

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Claude Opus 4.5 or GPT-5 nano?

Claude Opus 4.5 is ahead overall, 85 to 31. The biggest single separator in this matchup is GPQA, where the scores are 97 and 71.2.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude Opus 4.5 or GPT-5 nano?

Claude Opus 4.5 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 80.8 versus 71.2. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Claude Opus 4.5 or GPT-5 nano?

Claude Opus 4.5 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 96.1 versus 85.2. Inside this category, AIME 2025 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 9, 2026

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