Head to head
Claude Opus 5 vs GPT-5.6 Sol
Which is better, Claude Opus 5 or GPT-5.6 Sol?
Claude Opus 5 finishes ahead of GPT-5.6 Sol on the index, 87.1 to 84.4, and leads on all four scores: craft, speed, control and value. Both are scored on the same rubric, in the same week, and neither placing is sponsored.
Updated
Claude Opus 5
12 of 73
87.1
The default of the summer, now replaced by an Opus that is cheaper and better.
GPT-5.6 Sol
25 of 73
84.4
Strong and now discounted, but GPT-6.1 Sol beats it for half the money.
The four scores, side by side
| Score | Claude Opus 5 | GPT-5.6 Sol | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Craft | 92 | 89 | +3 |
| Speed | 82 | 74 | +8 |
| Control | 90 | 91 | +1 |
| Value | 74 | 72 | +2 |
| Index score | 87.1 | 84.4 | +2.7 |
Which to pick
Claude Opus 5 is the safer pick on every axis we score. GPT-5.6 Sol earns its place in the index, but nothing in these four numbers argues for it over Claude Opus 5.
Claude Opus 5
Opus 5 was the model to reach for by default from July, and it is still strong on serious coding and agent work. Opus 5.5 has now replaced it at a lower price per token with clearly better results on both independent leaderboards, and Anthropic lists Opus 5 as a legacy model. There is no reason to start new work on it, though nothing forces existing work to move yet.
Where it shines
- Frontier-class output on coding and agent work
- Fast enough for interactive use
- Excellent at long-context reading of an existing codebase
GPT-5.6 Sol
GPT-5.6 Sol was OpenAI's deepest thinker in the summer and remains strong on mathematics and long reasoning. OpenAI has cut its price to four dollars in and twenty out until at least late November, but GPT-6.1 Sol now costs half that with better scores, and ChatGPT has already moved to GPT-6. It is still active on the API, which matters for anyone whose prompts were tuned against it.
Where it shines
- Still strong on mathematics and formal reasoning
- Context window past a million tokens
- Temporarily discounted from its launch price