GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark vs Claude Sonnet 4.6

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

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 87 to 78. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 82.3 against 60. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is LiveCodeBench, 80 to 54. Claude Sonnet 4.6 does hit back in multimodal & grounded, 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-5.3-Codex-Spark. GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark 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-5.3-Codex-Spark gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 200K for Claude Sonnet 4.6.

Quick Verdict

Pick GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude Sonnet 4.6 only becomes the better choice if multimodal & grounded is the priority or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Agentic

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark

85.6

Claude Sonnet 4.6

71.1

90
Terminal-Bench 2.0
70
82
BrowseComp
77
83
OSWorld-Verified
68

Coding

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark

82.3

Claude Sonnet 4.6

60

91
HumanEval
93
80
SWE-bench Verified
69
80
LiveCodeBench
54
85
SWE-bench Pro
64

Multimodal & Grounded

Claude Sonnet 4.6

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark

88.3

Claude Sonnet 4.6

91.9

86
MMMU-Pro
95
91
OfficeQA Pro
88

Reasoning

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark

92.7

Claude Sonnet 4.6

87.6

94
SimpleQA
95
92
MuSR
93
97
BBH
88
91
LongBench v2
83
92
MRCRv2
79

Knowledge

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark

78.3

Claude Sonnet 4.6

71.8

97
MMLU
99
95
GPQA
97
93
SuperGPQA
95
91
OpenBookQA
93
88
MMLU-Pro
83
42
HLE
21
88
FrontierScience
85

Instruction Following

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark

92

Claude Sonnet 4.6

91

92
IFEval
91

Multilingual

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark

90.8

Claude Sonnet 4.6

89.7

94
MGSM
91
89
MMLU-ProX
89

Mathematics

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark

96.7

Claude Sonnet 4.6

94.1

98
AIME 2023
99
98
AIME 2024
99
97
AIME 2025
98
94
HMMT Feb 2023
95
96
HMMT Feb 2024
97
95
HMMT Feb 2025
96
95
BRUMO 2025
96
98
MATH-500
91

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark or Claude Sonnet 4.6?

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark is ahead overall, 87 to 78. The biggest single separator in this matchup is LiveCodeBench, where the scores are 80 and 54.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark or Claude Sonnet 4.6?

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 78.3 versus 71.8. Inside this category, HLE is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark or Claude Sonnet 4.6?

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 82.3 versus 60. Inside this category, LiveCodeBench is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark or Claude Sonnet 4.6?

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 96.7 versus 94.1. Inside this category, MATH-500 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark or Claude Sonnet 4.6?

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 92.7 versus 87.6. Inside this category, MRCRv2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark or Claude Sonnet 4.6?

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 85.6 versus 71.1. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark or Claude Sonnet 4.6?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 91.9 versus 88.3. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark or Claude Sonnet 4.6?

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 92 versus 91. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark or Claude Sonnet 4.6?

GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 90.8 versus 89.7. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

Weekly LLM Benchmark Digest

Get notified when new models drop, benchmark scores change, or the leaderboard shifts. One email per week.

Free. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. We only store derived location metadata for consent routing.