Head-to-head · frontier vs frontier

Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo vs o4 Turbo: which model should you choose?

We compared Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo and o4 Turbo on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. o4 Turbo has the stronger average benchmark score; o4 Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.

Anthropic

Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo

Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo is a frontier model from Anthropic. It offers a 2,000,000-token context window, costs $19.57 per million input tokens and $106.60 per million output tokens, and averages 85.7 across the index's benchmark suite.

Input
$19.57 / 1M
Output
$106.60 / 1M
Context
2,000,000
Avg score
85.7
Open weights
No
Full Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo page
OpenAI

o4 Turbo

o4 Turbo is a frontier model from OpenAI. It offers a 2,000,000-token context window, costs $19.34 per million input tokens and $82.19 per million output tokens, and averages 86.6 across the index's benchmark suite.

Input
$19.34 / 1M
Output
$82.19 / 1M
Context
2,000,000
Avg score
86.6
Open weights
No
Full o4 Turbo page

Specification comparison

SpecClaude Opus 4.5 Turboo4 TurboEdge
Input price / 1M$19.57$19.34B
Output price / 1M$106.60$82.19B
Context window2,000,0002,000,000Tie
Max output65,5368,192A
Average score85.786.6B
Arena Elo1469.31468.1A
Open weightsNoNoTie

Benchmark comparison

Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo wins 5, o4 Turbo wins 7, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5 Turboo4 TurboGapWinner
MMLU-Pro85.888.12.3o4 Turbo
GPQA Diamond81.984.82.9o4 Turbo
SWE-bench Verified75.078.43.4o4 Turbo
HumanEval89.891.01.2o4 Turbo
MATH-50093.291.71.5Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo
AIME 202587.285.91.3Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo
LiveCodeBench78.580.11.6o4 Turbo
IFEval92.292.60.4o4 Turbo
TruthfulQA85.588.83.3o4 Turbo
HellaSwag92.891.31.5Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo
MMMU80.579.60.9Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo
Arena Elo1469.31468.11.2Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo

Price analysis

On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo costs about $41.33 per million tokens and o4 Turbo costs about $35.05. o4 Turbo is roughly 15% cheaper than Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.

Both models list a 2,000,000-token context window. That is enough for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.

Verdict

Across 12 shared benchmarks, Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo wins 5, o4 Turbo wins 7, and 0 are tied. On the index average, o4 Turbo leads Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo by 0.9 points (86.6 versus 85.7).

The price picture favours o4 Turbo. The context picture is effectively a tie. 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 o4 Turbo for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.

Choose Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo if

  • You need the larger 65,536-token output limit.

Choose o4 Turbo if

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

FAQ

Is Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo better than o4 Turbo?

On the index average, o4 Turbo leads Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo by 0.9 points (86.6 versus 85.7). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo wins 5 benchmarks, o4 Turbo wins 7.

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo or o4 Turbo?

o4 Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $35.05 per million tokens, versus $41.33 for Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo.

Which has the larger context window?

Both models list a 2,000,000-token context window.

Are these models open weights?

Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo is proprietary; o4 Turbo is proprietary.

Which should I choose for production?

If you need a single default, start with o4 Turbo for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.

Related comparisons