Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.
| Metric | gpt-oss-120b (high) | Claude Opus 4.6 (Non-reasoning, High Effort) |
|---|---|---|
| Input ($/M tokens) | $0.15 | $5 |
| Output ($/M tokens) | $0.59 | $25 |
Verdict. gpt-oss-120b (high) and Claude Opus 4.6 (Non-reasoning, High Effort) split the benchmark comparison evenly at 1–1. The tiebreaker here is price, speed, and what you actually run them on.
Pricing. Both models sit in the budget / premium bracket for output-token pricing. At 0.0× the per-million-token cost, gpt-oss-120b (high) is meaningfully cheaper if your traffic is output-heavy (long completions, document generation, agent loops). gpt-oss-120b (high) makes more sense when output volume is low and absolute reasoning quality justifies the premium.
Strengths. gpt-oss-120b (high) is strongest on Coding Index (30.4), Intelligence Index (12.3). Claude Opus 4.6 (Non-reasoning, High Effort) leads on Intelligence Index (26.4).
Speed. On throughput, gpt-oss-120b (high) generates tokens at 230 tok/s versus 38 tok/s — about 83% faster. On time-to-first-token, gpt-oss-120b (high) responds in 840ms vs 1930ms, which matters most for chat-style UIs.
Provider. OpenAI and Anthropic sell to overlapping but distinct developer audiences: OpenAI tends to ship frontier reasoning models with premium positioning, while Anthropic often prices more aggressively. Your existing vendor relationships, billing, and SLA preferences may matter as much as the raw numbers above.
Workload cost. Workload scenarios (per million requests at 30M input + 15M output tokens): gpt-oss-120b (high) costs $13.35 ($160/year); Claude Opus 4.6 (Non-reasoning, High Effort) costs $525.00 ($6300/year). At a smaller 5M-input/2M-output scale (single-developer tool or prototype): gpt-oss-120b (high) ≈ $1.93/run, Claude Opus 4.6 (Non-reasoning, High Effort) ≈ $75.00/run. At agent/realtime scale (200M input / 100M output per million requests): gpt-oss-120b (high) ≈ $89/run, Claude Opus 4.6 (Non-reasoning, High Effort) ≈ $3500/run. gpt-oss-120b (high) becomes more attractive at higher volume — the absolute per-token pricing difference compounds when you ship at scale.
Recommendation. Benchmarks are too close to call (0-win swing) but Claude Opus 4.6 (Non-reasoning, High Effort) is 42.4× more expensive per million output tokens. For most workloads the cheaper option (gpt-oss-120b (high)) wins on cost-quality tradeoff. Only pay the premium for Claude Opus 4.6 (Non-reasoning, High Effort) if you have a measured lift on a task your product depends on.
Head-to-head deltas
Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks
gpt-oss-120b (high) is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $0.26/M tokens vs $10.00/M for Claude Opus 4.6 (Non-reasoning, High Effort).
It's a tie — both models win 1 benchmarks each across 12 evaluated categories. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.
gpt-oss-120b (high) generates tokens faster at 230 tok/s vs 38 tok/s. gpt-oss-120b (high) also has lower time-to-first-token (0.84s vs 1.93s).
Choose based on your priorities: gpt-oss-120b (high) for lower cost, both perform similarly on benchmarks, and gpt-oss-120b (high) for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.