GPT-5 (medium) vs o1

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

GPT-5 (medium) is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 82 to 51. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

GPT-5 (medium)'s sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 70 against 41. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SWE-bench Verified, 67 to 41. o1 does hit back in knowledge, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

o1 gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 128K for GPT-5 (medium).

Quick Verdict

Pick GPT-5 (medium) if you want the stronger benchmark profile. o1 only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority or you need the larger 200K context window.

Knowledge

o1

GPT-5 (medium)

76.7

o1

83.8

91
MMLU
91.8
89
GPQA
75.7
87
SuperGPQA
-
85
OpenBookQA
-
81
MMLU-Pro
-
27
HLE
-

Coding

GPT-5 (medium)

GPT-5 (medium)

70

o1

41

83
HumanEval
-
67
SWE-bench Verified
41
60
LiveCodeBench
-

Mathematics

GPT-5 (medium)

GPT-5 (medium)

92

o1

74.3

93
AIME 2023
-
95
AIME 2024
74.3
94
AIME 2025
-
89
HMMT Feb 2023
-
91
HMMT Feb 2024
-
90
HMMT Feb 2025
-
92
BRUMO 2025
-
92
MATH-500
-

Reasoning

GPT-5 (medium)
87
SimpleQA
-
85
MuSR
-
92
BBH
-

Instruction Following

o1

GPT-5 (medium)

88

o1

92.2

88
IFEval
92.2

Multilingual

GPT-5 (medium)
90
MGSM
-

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, GPT-5 (medium) or o1?

GPT-5 (medium) is ahead overall, 82 to 51. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Verified, where the scores are 67 and 41.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, GPT-5 (medium) or o1?

o1 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 83.8 versus 76.7. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, GPT-5 (medium) or o1?

GPT-5 (medium) has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 70 versus 41. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, GPT-5 (medium) or o1?

GPT-5 (medium) has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 92 versus 74.3. Inside this category, AIME 2024 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, GPT-5 (medium) or o1?

o1 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 92.2 versus 88. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 9, 2026

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