GPT-5 Pro vs Claude Opus 5
Benchmarks, API Token Pricing, Context Window & Speed Comparison
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GPT-5 Pro by OpenAI and Claude Opus 5 by Anthropic represent two of the frontier AI models analyzed in our comprehensive 2026 AI benchmark and LLM comparison. In this head-to-head evaluation, we examine API token pricing, context window specifications, inference speed (tokens per second), and empirical reasoning performance. From a pure economic perspective, Claude Opus 5 holds a notable pricing advantage for token ingestion. On output generation, Claude Opus 5 is more economical per million generated tokens. In data-heavy architectures requiring extensive repository or document analysis, Claude Opus 5 provides an expanded memory horizon with 1,000K tokens. In latency-sensitive production environments, Claude Opus 5 leads in tokens-per-second throughput, making it ideal for real-time conversational agents and high-concurrency workflows. Below is the complete empirical head-to-head breakdown across cost, speed, context, and capability matrices.
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GPT-5 Pro
Maximum Reasoning GPT-5The high-compute GPT-5 tier for difficult analysis, code review and planning.
$15.00 / 1M
$120.00 / 1M
400K tokens
78.5%
Claude Opus 5
Thinking-First FlagshipThe thinking-first flagship of mid-2026, combining persistent reasoning threads, 1M context, and deep software engineering autonomy.
$5.00 / 1M
$25.00 / 1M
1M tokens
83.1%
Key Differences at a Glance
- Claude Opus 5 is 4.3x cheaper for API usage (input + output tokens combined).
- Claude Opus 5 has a larger context window (1M vs 400K tokens).
- Claude Opus 5 is faster at 68 tok/s vs 55 tok/s.
- Claude Opus 5 leads on SWE-bench coding (83.1% vs 78.5%).
| Feature | GPT-5 Pro | Claude Opus 5 |
|---|---|---|
Intelligence Index Composite reasoning & knowledge score (0-100) | 62 | 75 |
Provider | OpenAI | Anthropic |
Input Price Cost per million input tokens | $15.00 / 1M | $5.00 / 1M |
Output Price Cost per million output tokens | $120.00 / 1M | $25.00 / 1M |
Blended Price Weighted 7:2:1 cache:input:output per 1M | $16.05 / 1M | $3.85 / 1M |
Context Window Maximum input + output tokens | 400K tokens~600 A4 pages of text | 1M tokens~1,500 A4 pages of text |
Max Output Tokens Per single request | 272K | 128K |
Throughput Speed Tokens generated per second | 55 tok/s | 68 tok/s |
SWE-bench Verified Real-world software engineering | 78.5% | 83.1% |
GPQA Diamond Graduate-level reasoning | 87.2% | 80.5% |
Cached Input Price Prompt caching discount per 1M tokens | $1.50 / 1M | $0.50 / 1M |
Who Wins Where?
At-a-glance decision frameworkEmpirical Head-to-Head Benchmark Scores
Official evaluation metrics verified by independent third-party research labs.
Industry benchmark evaluating real-world GitHub issue resolution and multi-file debugging.
Challenging questions created by domain experts to test complex PhD-level reasoning.
Hardened reasoning and academic knowledge benchmark with reduced lucky-guess probability.
Crowdsourced human preference evaluation based on blind, head-to-head model battles.
Extremely difficult, closed-ended questions spanning the frontier of human expert knowledge.
Autonomous multi-step tasks executed inside a real command-line terminal environment.
Research-grade coding problems drawn from real scientific and numerical workloads.
Contamination-free competitive programming problems collected continuously over time.
American Invitational Mathematics Examination — multi-step Olympiad-level reasoning.
Accuracy when reasoning over very large inputs that fill the model context window.
Tokens emitted per second during active generation streaming.
Latency & Response Time
Time to first token (TTFT) and estimated end-to-end response time for a typical 500-token response.
Real-Time Interactive Token Cost Simulator
Adjust sliders to calculate projected monthly cloud API spending with prompt caching discounts.
GPT-5 Pro · Strengths & Key Advantages
- Highest accuracy and depth in the GPT-5 family
- Very large 272K output budget for long deliverables
- Excellent for reviewing large codebases and plans
- Very strong on long, interdependent planning problems
Considerations & Trade-offs
- Extremely expensive at $15 / $120 per 1M tokens
- Slow responses — unsuitable for interactive chat
Claude Opus 5 · Strengths & Key Advantages
- Sensational 83.1% SWE-bench Verified score paired with TerminalBench score of 51.8 with Claude Code
- Native 1,000,000 token context window with 99.7% needle-in-haystack recall
- Persistent reasoning threads allowing multi-step verification and self-correction
Considerations & Trade-offs
- Output pricing ($25/1M) is five times higher than lightweight alternatives
- Requires significant compute time during deep reasoning cycles
Token Use & Task Economics
Estimated cost and token consumption to complete one representative agentic task.
| Metric | GPT-5 Pro | Claude Opus 5 |
|---|---|---|
Cost per Task Estimated USD to finish one task | $20.40 | $5.49 |
Output Tokens / Task Tokens generated per task | 72K | 72K |
Reasoning Tokens / Task Thinking tokens burned per task | 48K | 37K |
Technical Specifications
Architecture, release timeline, capabilities, and modalities.
| Feature | GPT-5 Pro | Claude Opus 5 |
|---|---|---|
| Official API Model ID (SDK) | gpt-5-pro | claude-opus-5-20260701 |
| API Protocol | OpenAI Responses API & Chat Completions v1 | Anthropic Messages API + AWS Bedrock + Vertex AI |
| Release Date | 2025-10 | 2026-07 |
| Knowledge Cutoff | September 2024 | March 2026 |
| Architecture | Maximum-compute unified reasoning model | Thinking-First Autonomous Foundation Architecture |
| Parameters | Confidential | Confidential |
| Enterprise Rate Limits (RPM / TPM) | 10,000 – 30,000 RPM (Tier 5 Enterprise) · 800,000 – 2,000,000 TPM | 4,000 – 10,000 RPM (Tier 4 + Priority Tier) · 4,000,000 – 10,000,000 TPM |
| Long-Context Tier (>128K/200K) | Flat rate ($15/1M in) across full 400K window | Standard rate up to 200K tokens; 2x input/output tier above 200K tokens |
| Prompt Cache Policy & TTL | Automatic prefix caching at $1.5/1M (no extra cache-write fee) | $0.5/1M cached read (90% off); 5-min default & 1-hour extended TTL |
| Computer Use / GUI Agent | Supported (Screen coordinate grounding, browser & desktop GUI action loops) | Supported (Screen coordinate grounding, browser & desktop GUI action loops) |
| MCP & Parallel Tool Calling | Native MCP Client/Server ready · Parallel function calling · 100% Strict JSON Schema | Native MCP Client/Server ready · Parallel function calling · 100% Strict JSON Schema |
| Web Search Grounding & Sandbox | Native Web Search tool + Hosted Code Interpreter & File Search RAG | Native Web Search Citations + Code Execution Tool + MCP Connectors |
| Official Fine-Tuning Support | Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT), Direct Preference (DPO) & Reinforcement Fine-Tuning (RFT) | Custom Model Tuning via Amazon Bedrock & Prompt Distillation |
| Multimodal Token Billing | Text BPE (~4 chars/token) · Vision (~258–765 tokens per image tile) | Text BPE (~4 chars/token) · Vision (~258–765 tokens per image tile) |
| Quantization & Min GPU VRAM | Cloud-Hosted Proprietary (FP8 / BF16 Tensor Core Cluster) · Zero Local VRAM Required (100% Serverless Cloud API) | Cloud-Hosted Proprietary (FP8 / BF16 Tensor Core Cluster) · Zero Local VRAM Required (100% Serverless Cloud API) |
| Safety & Frontier Classification | OpenAI Preparedness Framework Audited & System Card Published | Anthropic RSP ASL-2 / ASL-3 Constitutional Safety Evaluated |
| Enterprise Compliance (ZDR/HIPAA/SOC2) | SOC2 Type II · GDPR · Zero Data Retention (ZDR) & HIPAA BAA Available on Enterprise Tier | SOC2 Type II · GDPR · Zero Data Retention (ZDR) & HIPAA BAA Available on Enterprise Tier |
| Input Modalities | text, vision | text, vision |
| Output Modalities | text | text |
GPT-5 Pro vs Claude Opus 5: Quick Answers
Which is more intelligent, GPT-5 Pro or Claude Opus 5?
Claude Opus 5 is more intelligent. It scores 75 compared with 62 on the composite Intelligence Index.
Which model is faster?
Claude Opus 5 is faster, generating 68 tokens per second compared with 55 tokens per second.
Which model is cheaper to run?
Claude Opus 5 is cheaper at $3.85 per 1M tokens blended, compared with $16.05 (7:2:1 cache:input:output ratio).
Which model has lower latency?
Claude Opus 5 has lower latency, with a time to first token of 1.50s compared with 4.20s.
Which model has a larger context window?
Claude Opus 5 has a larger context window, supporting 1M tokens compared with 400K tokens.
Verdict
Verdict & Model Selection Recommendation: Choose GPT-5 Pro if your priority is High-value, low-volume analysis and code review. Its performance in demanding tasks justifies its operational token cost. Choose Claude Opus 5 if your workflow prioritizes Complex software refactoring swarms, mission-critical scientific synthesis, and enterprise agent deployments. For large-scale batch processing or customer-facing conversational interfaces, its balance of speed and economics delivers superior ROI.
Frequently asked questions
How does GPT-5 Pro compare to Claude Opus 5 in API token pricing and cost per token?+
GPT-5 Pro costs $15.00 per 1M input tokens and $120.00 per 1M output tokens, whereas Claude Opus 5 costs $5.00 input and $25.00 output. Overall, Claude Opus 5 is the more cost-effective model for high-volume API pipelines. Both models support prompt caching discounts of up to 90% for repeated prompt prefixes.
Which model has a larger context window: GPT-5 Pro or Claude Opus 5?+
GPT-5 Pro supports a context window of 400K tokens (~300k words), while Claude Opus 5 supports 1,000K tokens (~750k words). Therefore, Claude Opus 5 can process more textual data and document context in a single prompt.
Which AI model is better for software engineering and coding: GPT-5 Pro or Claude Opus 5?+
GPT-5 Pro scores 78.5% on SWE-bench Verified while Claude Opus 5 scores 83.1%. For autonomous software engineering and multi-file debugging, Claude Opus 5 holds the verified benchmark lead.
What is the difference in reasoning capability and extended thinking between GPT-5 Pro and Claude Opus 5?+
GPT-5 Pro features native chain-of-thought extended thinking mode with configurable reasoning effort. In contrast, Claude Opus 5 provides chain-of-thought reasoning depth for complex math and science.
How does inference speed (tokens per second) compare between GPT-5 Pro and Claude Opus 5?+
GPT-5 Pro generates approximately 55 tokens per second, while Claude Opus 5 delivers 68 tokens per second. In latency-sensitive production environments, Claude Opus 5 provides faster time-to-first-token (TTFT) and higher streaming response velocity.
Can you implement a tiered LLM routing setup combining GPT-5 Pro and Claude Opus 5 to optimize costs?+
Yes! High-efficiency architectures route high-frequency routine classification and conversational tasks to Claude Opus 5 to save operational costs, and dynamically escalate complex architectural queries or reasoning tasks to GPT-5 Pro. This tiered routing pattern cuts overall API bills by up to 70%.
Understand key metrics like context window, token pricing, reasoning mode, and SWE-bench scores in our comprehensive AI glossary.
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Benchmark scores, token prices, and rate limits evolve rapidly as AI labs release model updates. Always verify current specifications and pricing on the official provider documentation.
Sources: GetInfoUs Independent AI Benchmarks & Official API Specs