Claude Opus 5 (Low) vs GPT-5.5 Instant (June 2026)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (Low) by Anthropic or GPT-5.5 Instant (June 2026) by OpenAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5 (Low) scores 13.4 points higher (39.4 vs 26.0) but costs 1.6× as much to run the benchmark ($1561 vs $987; both premium class). Pick Claude Opus 5 (Low) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise GPT-5.5 Instant (June 2026).
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (Low) | GPT-5.5 Instant (June 2026) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 39.4 | 26.0 | −34.0% GPT-5.5 Instant (June… is 34.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,560.91 | $986.85 | −36.8% GPT-5.5 Instant (June… is 36.8% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 11.31s | 16.68s | +47.5% GPT-5.5 Instant (June… is 47.5% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $5.00 / $30.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
GPT-5.5 Instant (June 2026) vs Claude Opus 5 (Low): 34.0% less intelligence, 36.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 47.5% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- GPT-5.5 Instant (June 2026) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Claude Opus 5 (Low)GPT-5.5 Instant (June 2026)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-low/gpt-5-5-instant-06-26 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-low/gpt-5-5-instant-06-26?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill