Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) vs gpt-oss-120b (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) by Anthropic or gpt-oss-120b (High) by OpenAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) scores 26.6 points higher (38.2 vs 11.6) but costs 57× as much to run the benchmark ($6998 vs $123; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) when you need intelligence above 11.6, and gpt-oss-120b (High) when 11.6 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) | gpt-oss-120b (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 38.2 | 11.6 | −69.6% gpt-oss-120b (High) is 69.6% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $6,998.25 | $122.71 | −98.2% gpt-oss-120b (High) is 98.2% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 190.29s | 11.44s | −94.0% gpt-oss-120b (High) is 94.0% 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 (Max): 69.6% less intelligence, 98.2% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 94.0% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (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-120b (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Max) scores 38.10 for $122.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Max)gpt-oss-120b (High)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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