Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs gpt-oss-120b (High)

Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, 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 2026-10-24.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 46.80
Total cost: $1027

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

Intelligence: 11.60
Total cost: $123

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallba… scores 35.2 points higher (46.8 vs 11.6) but costs 8.4× as much to run the benchmark ($1027 vs $123; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallba… when you need intelligence above 11.6, and gpt-oss-120b (High) when 11.6 is enough.

Metric	Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)	gpt-oss-120b (High)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	46.8	11.6	−75.2% gpt-oss-120b (High) is 75.2% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$1,027.40	$122.71	−88.1% gpt-oss-120b (High) is 88.1% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	14.89s	12.38s	−16.9% gpt-oss-120b (High) is 16.9% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$2.00 / $10.0	$0.15 / $0.60
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text

gpt-oss-120b (High) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 75.2% less intelligence, 88.1% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 16.9% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): what beats it gpt-oss-120b (High): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
gpt-oss-120b (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Max) scores 38.10 for $122.

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, 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-sonnet-5-5-high/gpt-oss-120b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-high/gpt-oss-120b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill