Claude Opus 5 (Low) vs gpt-oss-120b (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (Low) by Anthropic or gpt-oss-120b (High) by OpenAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5 (Low) scores 27.8 points higher (39.4 vs 11.6) but costs 13× as much to run the benchmark ($1561 vs $123; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5 (Low) when you need intelligence above 11.6, and gpt-oss-120b (High) when 11.6 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (Low) | gpt-oss-120b (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 39.4 | 11.6 | −70.6% gpt-oss-120b (High) is 70.6% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,560.91 | $122.71 | −92.1% gpt-oss-120b (High) is 92.1% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 11.79s | 12.38s | +5.0% gpt-oss-120b (High) is 5.0% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $0.15 / $0.60 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
gpt-oss-120b (High) vs Claude Opus 5 (Low): 70.6% less intelligence, 92.1% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 5.0% 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-oss-120b (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Max) scores 38.10 for $122.
Claude Opus 5 (Low)gpt-oss-120b (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-5-low/gpt-oss-120b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-low/gpt-oss-120b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill