Head-to-head · frontier vs frontier

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

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

Anthropic

Claude Opus 4.5 Pro

Claude Opus 4.5 Pro is a frontier model from Anthropic. It offers a 200,000-token context window, costs $20.98 per million input tokens and $85.59 per million output tokens, and averages 89.1 across the index's benchmark suite.

Input
$20.98 / 1M
Output
$85.59 / 1M
Context
200,000
Avg score
89.1
Open weights
No
Full Claude Opus 4.5 Pro page
OpenAI

GPT-5.2 Reasoning

GPT-5.2 Reasoning is a frontier model from OpenAI. It offers a 1,000,000-token context window, costs $20.98 per million input tokens and $102.78 per million output tokens, and averages 87.5 across the index's benchmark suite.

Input
$20.98 / 1M
Output
$102.78 / 1M
Context
1,000,000
Avg score
87.5
Open weights
No
Full GPT-5.2 Reasoning page

Specification comparison

SpecClaude Opus 4.5 ProGPT-5.2 ReasoningEdge
Input price / 1M$20.98$20.98Tie
Output price / 1M$85.59$102.78A
Context window200,0001,000,000B
Max output32,76865,536B
Average score89.187.5A
Arena Elo1483.91500.4B
Open weightsNoNoTie

Benchmark comparison

Claude Opus 4.5 Pro wins 7, GPT-5.2 Reasoning wins 5, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5 ProGPT-5.2 ReasoningGapWinner
MMLU-Pro91.287.04.2Claude Opus 4.5 Pro
GPQA Diamond86.087.01.0GPT-5.2 Reasoning
SWE-bench Verified81.178.22.9Claude Opus 4.5 Pro
HumanEval93.492.41.0Claude Opus 4.5 Pro
MATH-50091.291.40.2GPT-5.2 Reasoning
AIME 202591.484.96.5Claude Opus 4.5 Pro
LiveCodeBench84.184.60.5GPT-5.2 Reasoning
IFEval96.195.01.1Claude Opus 4.5 Pro
TruthfulQA86.788.21.5GPT-5.2 Reasoning
HellaSwag95.292.52.7Claude Opus 4.5 Pro
MMMU83.381.51.8Claude Opus 4.5 Pro
Arena Elo1483.91500.416.5GPT-5.2 Reasoning

Price analysis

On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Claude Opus 4.5 Pro costs about $37.13 per million tokens and GPT-5.2 Reasoning costs about $41.43. Claude Opus 4.5 Pro is roughly 10% cheaper than GPT-5.2 Reasoning. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.

GPT-5.2 Reasoning has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens, compared with 200,000 for Claude Opus 4.5 Pro. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.

Verdict

Across 12 shared benchmarks, Claude Opus 4.5 Pro wins 7, GPT-5.2 Reasoning wins 5, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Claude Opus 4.5 Pro leads GPT-5.2 Reasoning by 1.6 points (89.1 versus 87.5).

The price picture favours Claude Opus 4.5 Pro. The context picture favours GPT-5.2 Reasoning. 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 Claude Opus 4.5 Pro for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.

Choose Claude Opus 4.5 Pro if

  • You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
  • Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.

Choose GPT-5.2 Reasoning if

  • You need the larger 1,000,000-token context window.
  • You need the larger 65,536-token output limit.

FAQ

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

On the index average, Claude Opus 4.5 Pro leads GPT-5.2 Reasoning by 1.6 points (89.1 versus 87.5). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Claude Opus 4.5 Pro wins 7 benchmarks, GPT-5.2 Reasoning wins 5.

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

Claude Opus 4.5 Pro is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $37.13 per million tokens, versus $41.43 for GPT-5.2 Reasoning.

Which has the larger context window?

GPT-5.2 Reasoning has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens. Claude Opus 4.5 Pro has 200,000 tokens.

Are these models open weights?

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

Which should I choose for production?

If you need a single default, start with Claude Opus 4.5 Pro for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.

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