Which is more cost-effective, GPT-5.6 Sol or Claude 3 Opus?

Based on 1M input + 1M output tokens, GPT-5.6 Sol costs $24.00/month versus Claude 3 Opus at $90.00/month. The cheaper option depends on your token volume and prompt-to-completion ratio. Use the interactive calculator on this page to enter your exact usage.

How accurate is this cost comparison?

List prices come from each provider's own pricing page and every model page shows when they were last verified. The capability scores are iOPTERA's editorial composites — informed by public benchmarks, not benchmark results themselves; the methodology page explains how they are set.

Which model scores higher on benchmarks?

GPT-5.6 Sol scores 97 in coding and 99 in reasoning benchmarks. Claude 3 Opus scores 80 in coding and 90 in reasoning. See the full 5-category breakdown in the Benchmark Comparison section above.

What are the context window sizes of GPT-5.6 Sol and Claude 3 Opus?

GPT-5.6 Sol supports a 1.1M-token context window while Claude 3 Opus supports 200K tokens. A larger context window lets you process more text in a single API call.

Which model is faster for real-time applications?

GPT-5.6 Sol has a speed score of 70/100 and Claude 3 Opus scores 50/100 on our latency benchmark. For interactive chatbots and low-latency tasks, the higher speed score is preferable.

Can I calculate costs for my specific token volume?

Yes. Use the interactive cost calculator on this page. Enter your monthly token volume and adjust the prompt-to-completion ratio. You can also use presets for common scenarios like Customer Support Bots (~30M tokens/month) or Document Summarizers (~15M tokens/month).

Cost and performance comparison

GPT-5.6 Sol vs Claude 3 Opus

Model AOpenAI

GPT-5.6 Sol

Capability score (editorial)99/100

Cost / 1M Tokens: $8.80; 70% in · 30% out mix
Value Index (score÷cost): 11.2; Higher = better value

Speed: 70/100
Context: 1.1M
Tier: Power Tier

List price from the OpenAI pricing page, verified October 12, 2026.

Promotional price, guaranteed until at least November 21, 2026. Regular price: $5.00 / $30.00.

Check the source

How we verify prices

Model BAnthropic

Claude 3 Opus

Capability score (editorial)90/100

Cost / 1M Tokens: $33.00; 70% in · 30% out mix; ≈ $36.30 for the same text, tokenizer included
Value Index (score÷cost): 2.5; Higher = better value

Speed: 50/100
Context: 200K
Tier: Power Tier

Last list price before the model was retired.

Its tokenizer produces about 10% more tokens than OpenAI's for the same text, so the real cost runs higher than the list price suggests. This is an estimate: the tokenizer has not been measured yet.

How we verify prices

In-depth analysis

GPT-5.6 Sol vs Claude 3 Opus: Detailed Comparison

GPT-5.6 Sol is OpenAI's flagship-tier language model with a 1.1M-token context window, excelling at reasoning. Claude 3 Opus from Anthropic is a flagship-tier model supporting 200K tokens in context, with standout performance in reasoning.

GPT-5.6 Sol is both the cheaper and the stronger model here — for the same text it costs 76% less than Claude 3 Opus and still leads on combined coding and reasoning by 26 points. There is no tradeoff to weigh on this pair: unless you need something specific from Claude 3 Opus, the cheaper model is simply the better one. GPT-5.6 Sol is priced at $4.00/M input tokens and $20.00/M output tokens. Claude 3 Opus costs $15.00/M input and $75.00/M output.

Claude 3 Opus turns the same text into about 10% more tokens than GPT-5.6 Sol, because their tokenizers differ — so comparing list prices per token understates what Claude 3 Opus costs. For the same text, split 70% input and 30% output and counted the way OpenAI's tokenizer counts it, Claude 3 Opus works out at about $36.30 per million tokens and GPT-5.6 Sol at $8.80. Every cost figure on this page includes that difference.

On iOPTERA's editorial scores, GPT-5.6 Sol leads with 97/100 for coding and 99/100 for reasoning, against Claude 3 Opus's 80/100 and 90/100.

Capability breakdown

Across the five core benchmark categories, here is how GPT-5.6 Sol and Claude 3 Opus stack up head to head:

coding

GPT-5.6 Sol leads

reasoning

GPT-5.6 Sol leads

data extraction

GPT-5.6 Sol leads

creative tasks

GPT-5.6 Sol leads

vision/multimodal

GPT-5.6 Sol leads

Best model by task

coding: GPT-5.6 Sol wins with 97/100
reasoning: GPT-5.6 Sol wins with 99/100
data extraction: GPT-5.6 Sol wins with 95/100
creative tasks: GPT-5.6 Sol wins with 96/100
vision/multimodal: GPT-5.6 Sol wins with 96/100

Estimated monthly cost at scale

For 10M + 2M tokens of text a month (counted the way OpenAI's tokenizer counts), GPT-5.6 Sol runs about $80.00 while Claude 3 Opus runs about $330.00 — GPT-5.6 Sol saves roughly $250.00 (76%) every month.

What actually decides it

GPT-5.6 Sol and Claude 3 Opus come from different labs, which means different tokenizers, different API shapes, and a second vendor relationship. The same English text does not produce the same token count on both, so a price-per-million comparison understates the difference — measure your own prompts on each before treating the headline rates as the full story.

GPT-5.6 Sol and Claude 3 Opus are 28 months apart, which is more than one generation in this market. Benchmark comparisons across that gap flatter the older model: it was measured against the evaluations that existed at the time. Treat Claude 3 Opus's scores as a floor for what it does well and be sceptical of a close-looking result.

The context gap is the largest single difference on this pair: GPT-5.6 Sol takes 1.1M tokens against 200K for Claude 3 Opus, roughly 5.3x. That is the difference between feeding in a whole repository or a full contract set and having to chunk it. If your work involves documents you cannot split cleanly, this decides it on its own.

Latency separates them: GPT-5.6 Sol scores 70/100 against 50/100 for Claude 3 Opus, a 20-point gap. That matters for anything a person waits on — chat, autocomplete, interactive tools. For batch and background work it does not, and trading latency for capability there is usually the right call.

One practical asymmetry: GPT-5.6 Sol offers a batch API at 50% off standard rates, and Claude 3 Opus does not. For anything that does not need an answer immediately — nightly enrichment, backfills, evaluation runs — that discount can be worth more than the difference in list price, and it is easy to overlook when comparing headline rates.

GPT-5.6 Sol wins this comparison outright — cheaper and stronger. Choose Claude 3 Opus only if it has a specific capability you need; on price and benchmarks it is behind on both.

What you actually pay

The list price is only the start. Prompt caching, batch processing and long prompts change the bill, and each provider sets them differently. Prices per 1M tokens.

Pricing terms beyond the list price, per 1M tokens
Pricing term	GPT-5.6 Sol	Claude 3 Opus
List price (input / output)	$4.00 / $20.00	$15.00 / $75.00
Cached input	$0.4010% of the input price	—
Batch API	50% off input and output	—
Long prompts	Over 272K tokens: $8.00 / $30.00	—
Input with 80% cache hits	$1.12	—

The last row assumes 80% of input tokens are read from the cache, as in a chat app that re-sends a long system prompt or RAG over the same documents. Cache-write and storage charges are not included.

Claude also bills cache writes: 1.25× the input price for a 5-minute cache, 2× for one hour.

Checked on October 8, 2026 against the pricing pages of OpenAI, Anthropic.

Capability scores

iOPTERA editorial scores across 5 categories — informed by public benchmarks, not measured by us

CategoryGPT-5.6 SolClaude 3Winner

Coding

Reasoning

Extraction

Creative

Vision

GPT-5.6 Sol: 5 wins

Claude 3 Opus: 0 wins

GPT-5.6 Sol leads overall

Speed Score

70/100vs50/100

GPT-5.6Claude

Context Window

1050Kvs200K

GPT-5.6Claude

What Is a Token?

Models don't read words — they process tokens.

A token is roughly 4 characters of English text (~¾ of a word). Your API bill is priced per million tokens — understanding this directly reduces your costs.

Short phrase

"Hello, world!"

4 tokens

GPT-5.6 Sol: $1.60
Claude 3 Opus: $6.60

Business email

One typical email (~200 words)

~270 tokens

GPT-5.6 Sol: $108.00
Claude 3 Opus: $445.50

Code file

50-line Python script

~400 tokens

GPT-5.6 Sol: $160.00
Claude 3 Opus: $660.00

Prices shown are for 100,000 runs of each workload — one run costs a fraction of a cent on both GPT-5.6 Sol and Claude 3 Opus, so the number only becomes meaningful at production volume. Input tokens only; add your output volume in the calculator below.

How to check your token usage

response.usage.total_tokens

Every API response includes a usage object. Sum total_tokens across all calls to get your monthly figure, then use the calculator below.

Your Cost Calculator

Enter your actual monthly token usage to see real savings

Quick Presets

Monthly Token Volume

30M tokens

Prompt / Completion Split

Prompt 70%Completion 30%

Cheaper

GPT-5.6 Sol

$264.00/mo

$3,168.00/yr

$4.00/M input$20.00/M output

Claude 3 Opus

$1,089.00/mo

$13,068.00/yr

$15.00/M input$75.00/M output

Annual Savings

$9,900.00 saved per year

GPT-5.6 Sol cheaper · $825.00/mo

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