Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) vs gpt-oss-120b (High)

Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or gpt-oss-120b (High) by OpenAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 53.40
Total cost: $13129

OpenAIgpt-oss-120b (High)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 11.60
Total cost: $123

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) scores 41.8 points higher (53.4 vs 11.6) but costs 107× as much to run the benchmark ($13129 vs $123; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 11.6, and gpt-oss-120b (High) when 11.6 is enough.

Metric	Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback)	gpt-oss-120b (High)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	53.4	11.6	−78.3% gpt-oss-120b (High) is 78.3% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$13,128.86	$122.71	−99.1% gpt-oss-120b (High) is 99.1% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	201.58s	11.29s	−94.4% gpt-oss-120b (High) is 94.4% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$10.0 / $50.0	$0.15 / $0.60
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text

gpt-oss-120b (High) vs Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback): 78.3% less intelligence, 99.1% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 94.4% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback): what beats it gpt-oss-120b (High): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) scores 57.60 for $8708.
gpt-oss-120b (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Max) scores 38.10 for $122.

Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback)gpt-oss-120b (High)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model

Matchup

Compare something else

Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1/gpt-oss-120b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1/gpt-oss-120b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill