Head-to-head comparison across 3benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
Claude Sonnet 4.6
85
GPT-5.2
83
Pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. GPT-5.2 only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.
Agentic
+10.1 difference
Coding
+1.7 difference
Knowledge
+18.7 difference
Claude Sonnet 4.6
GPT-5.2
$3 / $15
$2 / $8
44 t/s
73 t/s
1.48s
130.34s
200K
400K
Pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. GPT-5.2 only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the cleaner provisional overall profile here, landing at 85 versus 83. It is a real lead, but still close enough that category-level strengths matter more than the headline number.
Claude Sonnet 4.6's sharpest advantage is in agentic, where it averages 65.3 against 55.2. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is OSWorld-Verified, 72.5% to 47.3%. GPT-5.2 does hit back in knowledge, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $3.00 input / $15.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $2.00 input / $8.00 output per 1M tokens for GPT-5.2. GPT-5.2 is the reasoning model in the pair, while Claude Sonnet 4.6 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-5.2 gives you the larger context window at 400K, compared with 200K for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 85 to 83. The biggest single separator in this matchup is OSWorld-Verified, where the scores are 72.5% and 47.3%.
GPT-5.2 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 92.4 versus 73.7. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 66.4 versus 64.7. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 65.3 versus 55.2. Inside this category, OSWorld-Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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