Compare/Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) vs GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning)

Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)vsGPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning)

Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.

Anthropic

Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)

Input
$6.25/M
Output
$25/M
Speed
49 tok/s
TTFT
12.97s
OpenAI

GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning)

Input
$5/M
Output
$30/M
Speed
57 tok/s
TTFT
1.05s

Winner by Category

Cheaper
Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)
Faster (tok/s)
GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning)
Lower Latency
GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning)
Benchmarks (5-2)
Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)

Pricing Comparison

MetricClaude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning)
Input ($/M tokens)$6.25$5
Output ($/M tokens)$25$30
Cost for 1M input + 100K output tokens:
Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)$8.75
GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning)$8.00

Speed Comparison

Output Speed (tokens/s) — higher is better
Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)
49 tok/s
GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning)
57 tok/s
Time to First Token (seconds) — lower is better
Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)
12.97s
GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning)
1.05s

Benchmark Comparison

Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks

Intelligence Index
52.940.9
Coding Index
48.148.6
Math Index
GPQA Diamond
89.6%76.8%
MMLU-Pro
LiveCodeBench
AIME 2025
MATH-500
Humanity's Last Exam
36.7%12.6%
SciCode
51.9%47.3%
IFBench
53.1%46.1%
TerminalBench
46.2%49.2%
Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)5 wins
2 winsGPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning)

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) or GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning)?

Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $10.94/M tokens vs $11.25/M for GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning).

Which model performs better on benchmarks?

Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) wins 5 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 2 for GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning). See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.

Which is faster for real-time applications?

GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning) generates tokens faster at 57 tok/s vs 49 tok/s. However, GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning) has lower time-to-first-token (1.05s vs 12.97s).

When should I use Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) vs GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning)?

Choose based on your priorities: Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) for lower cost, Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) for stronger benchmark performance, and GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning) for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.