Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) vs gpt-oss-20b (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) by Anthropic or gpt-oss-20b (High) by OpenAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) scores 32.8 points higher (41.8 vs 9.0) but costs 239× as much to run the benchmark ($6874 vs $28.8; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) when you need intelligence above 9.0, and gpt-oss-20b (High) when 9.0 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) | gpt-oss-20b (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 41.8 | 9.0 | −78.5% gpt-oss-20b (High) is 78.5% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $6,873.86 | $28.81 | −99.6% gpt-oss-20b (High) is 99.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 37.99s | 15.23s | −59.9% gpt-oss-20b (High) is 59.9% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $0.05 / $0.22 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
gpt-oss-20b (High) vs Claude Opus 4.8 (Max): 78.5% less intelligence, 99.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 59.9% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
- gpt-oss-20b (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.
Claude Opus 4.8 (Max)gpt-oss-20b (High)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-4-8/gpt-oss-20b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-4-8/gpt-oss-20b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill