GPT-5.2 Instant vs o1-preview

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

GPT-5.2 Instant is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 85 to 77. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

GPT-5.2 Instant's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 93.1 against 75.6. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMMU-Pro, 94 to 72.

o1-preview gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 128K for GPT-5.2 Instant.

Quick Verdict

Pick GPT-5.2 Instant if you want the stronger benchmark profile. o1-preview only becomes the better choice if you need the larger 200K context window.

Agentic

GPT-5.2 Instant

GPT-5.2 Instant

79.6

o1-preview

75.4

83
Terminal-Bench 2.0
77
82
BrowseComp
79
74
OSWorld-Verified
71

Coding

GPT-5.2 Instant

GPT-5.2 Instant

75.5

o1-preview

64.6

87
HumanEval
86
75
SWE-bench Verified
65
74
LiveCodeBench
60
77
SWE-bench Pro
69

Multimodal & Grounded

GPT-5.2 Instant

GPT-5.2 Instant

93.1

o1-preview

75.6

94
MMMU-Pro
72
92
OfficeQA Pro
80

Reasoning

GPT-5.2 Instant

GPT-5.2 Instant

90.9

o1-preview

86.8

95
SimpleQA
88
93
MuSR
86
96
BBH
93
89
LongBench v2
87
84
MRCRv2
83

Knowledge

GPT-5.2 Instant

GPT-5.2 Instant

79.8

o1-preview

71.3

98
MMLU
92
97
GPQA
90
95
SuperGPQA
88
93
OpenBookQA
86
88
MMLU-Pro
80
43
HLE
32
91
FrontierScience
83

Instruction Following

GPT-5.2 Instant

GPT-5.2 Instant

95

o1-preview

88

95
IFEval
88

Multilingual

GPT-5.2 Instant

GPT-5.2 Instant

94.4

o1-preview

87.4

95
MGSM
90
94
MMLU-ProX
86

Mathematics

GPT-5.2 Instant

GPT-5.2 Instant

97.2

o1-preview

93.5

99
AIME 2023
94
99
AIME 2024
96
98
AIME 2025
95
95
HMMT Feb 2023
90
97
HMMT Feb 2024
92
96
HMMT Feb 2025
91
96
BRUMO 2025
93
98
MATH-500
94

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, GPT-5.2 Instant or o1-preview?

GPT-5.2 Instant is ahead overall, 85 to 77. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMMU-Pro, where the scores are 94 and 72.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, GPT-5.2 Instant or o1-preview?

GPT-5.2 Instant has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.8 versus 71.3. Inside this category, HLE is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, GPT-5.2 Instant or o1-preview?

GPT-5.2 Instant has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 75.5 versus 64.6. Inside this category, LiveCodeBench is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, GPT-5.2 Instant or o1-preview?

GPT-5.2 Instant has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 97.2 versus 93.5. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, GPT-5.2 Instant or o1-preview?

GPT-5.2 Instant has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 90.9 versus 86.8. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, GPT-5.2 Instant or o1-preview?

GPT-5.2 Instant has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.6 versus 75.4. 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-5.2 Instant or o1-preview?

GPT-5.2 Instant has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 93.1 versus 75.6. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, GPT-5.2 Instant or o1-preview?

GPT-5.2 Instant has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 95 versus 88. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, GPT-5.2 Instant or o1-preview?

GPT-5.2 Instant has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 94.4 versus 87.4. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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