Head-to-head · frontier vs frontier

Claude Opus 4.5 Max vs GPT-5.2 Pro: which model should you choose?

We compared Claude Opus 4.5 Max and GPT-5.2 Pro on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. GPT-5.2 Pro has the stronger average benchmark score; GPT-5.2 Pro is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.

Anthropic

Claude Opus 4.5 Max

Claude Opus 4.5 Max is a frontier model from Anthropic. It offers a 1,000,000-token context window, costs $20.90 per million input tokens and $106.51 per million output tokens, and averages 87.8 across the index's benchmark suite.

Input
$20.90 / 1M
Output
$106.51 / 1M
Context
1,000,000
Avg score
87.8
Open weights
No
Full Claude Opus 4.5 Max page
OpenAI

GPT-5.2 Pro

GPT-5.2 Pro is a frontier model from OpenAI. It offers a 2,000,000-token context window, costs $21.32 per million input tokens and $76.33 per million output tokens, and averages 89.6 across the index's benchmark suite.

Input
$21.32 / 1M
Output
$76.33 / 1M
Context
2,000,000
Avg score
89.6
Open weights
No
Full GPT-5.2 Pro page

Specification comparison

SpecClaude Opus 4.5 MaxGPT-5.2 ProEdge
Input price / 1M$20.90$21.32A
Output price / 1M$106.51$76.33B
Context window1,000,0002,000,000B
Max output16,38432,768B
Average score87.889.6B
Arena Elo1501.91485.0A
Open weightsNoNoTie

Benchmark comparison

Claude Opus 4.5 Max wins 3, GPT-5.2 Pro wins 9, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5 MaxGPT-5.2 ProGapWinner
MMLU-Pro89.591.62.1GPT-5.2 Pro
GPQA Diamond84.683.21.4Claude Opus 4.5 Max
SWE-bench Verified79.581.72.2GPT-5.2 Pro
HumanEval91.796.85.1GPT-5.2 Pro
MATH-50094.291.82.4Claude Opus 4.5 Max
AIME 202589.391.01.7GPT-5.2 Pro
LiveCodeBench80.684.64.0GPT-5.2 Pro
IFEval94.595.61.1GPT-5.2 Pro
TruthfulQA86.990.03.1GPT-5.2 Pro
HellaSwag93.095.32.3GPT-5.2 Pro
MMMU82.384.42.1GPT-5.2 Pro
Arena Elo1501.91485.016.9Claude Opus 4.5 Max

Price analysis

On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Claude Opus 4.5 Max costs about $42.30 per million tokens and GPT-5.2 Pro costs about $35.07. GPT-5.2 Pro is roughly 17% cheaper than Claude Opus 4.5 Max. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.

GPT-5.2 Pro has the larger context window at 2,000,000 tokens, compared with 1,000,000 for Claude Opus 4.5 Max. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.

Verdict

Across 12 shared benchmarks, Claude Opus 4.5 Max wins 3, GPT-5.2 Pro wins 9, and 0 are tied. On the index average, GPT-5.2 Pro leads Claude Opus 4.5 Max by 1.8 points (89.6 versus 87.8).

The price picture favours GPT-5.2 Pro. The context picture favours GPT-5.2 Pro. Those two dimensions often matter more than a few benchmark points once a model is good enough for the task.

If you need a single default, start with GPT-5.2 Pro for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.

Choose Claude Opus 4.5 Max if

  • You prefer Anthropic's tooling or already use it.

Choose GPT-5.2 Pro if

  • You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
  • Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
  • You need the larger 2,000,000-token context window.
  • You need the larger 32,768-token output limit.

FAQ

Is Claude Opus 4.5 Max better than GPT-5.2 Pro?

On the index average, GPT-5.2 Pro leads Claude Opus 4.5 Max by 1.8 points (89.6 versus 87.8). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Claude Opus 4.5 Max wins 3 benchmarks, GPT-5.2 Pro wins 9.

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.5 Max or GPT-5.2 Pro?

GPT-5.2 Pro is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $35.07 per million tokens, versus $42.30 for Claude Opus 4.5 Max.

Which has the larger context window?

GPT-5.2 Pro has the larger context window at 2,000,000 tokens. Claude Opus 4.5 Max has 1,000,000 tokens.

Are these models open weights?

Claude Opus 4.5 Max is proprietary; GPT-5.2 Pro is proprietary.

Which should I choose for production?

If you need a single default, start with GPT-5.2 Pro for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.

Related comparisons