Best reasoning
Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6
44
Highest reasoning score from the currently public benchmark fields.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 and GPT-5.2 live in the balanced-premium band where teams care about capability, but still watch price and deployment volume closely.
Choose GPT-5.2 when you want a slightly more cost-aware OpenAI route with strong coding posture. Choose Claude Sonnet 4.6 when you want the Anthropic option in the same serious production tier and value its long-context profile.
Biggest tradeoff
The pair is close enough that buying context matters. GPT-5.2 usually makes its case on price relative to higher-end flagships, while Claude Sonnet 4.6 often wins when Anthropic preference and long-context fit are part of the brief.
Quick Decision Cards
These cards call out the most useful early distinctions without hiding the fact that different public fields may point to different winners.
Highest reasoning score from the currently public benchmark fields.
Best coding posture from AA Coding Index, LiveCodeBench, or SWE Bench when present.
Lowest currently published input-token price.
Largest resolved context window from the public detail dataset.
Use-Case Framing
Best for teams picking a serious production model without moving all the way to the most expensive flagship tier.
Best for buyers who want an OpenAI-versus-Anthropic comparison closer to day-to-day deployment than prestige signaling.
Best for balancing coding, context, and spend instead of optimizing for one headline benchmark alone.
Full Matrix
Missing values stay visible as N/A, and softly tinted cells mark the leading value in each comparable row so the matrix scans faster.
Overview
Decision-first fields that summarize fit before the deeper benchmark matrix.
| Field | Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 anthropic | OpenAI: GPT-5.2 openai |
|---|---|---|
| Creator | anthropic | openai |
| Overall profile | Selective fit | Selective fit |
| Best for | Long-context research / Multimodal | Long-context research / Multimodal |
| Vision support | Yes | Yes |
| New in 2026 | Yes | No |
Intelligence / Reasoning
Broad reasoning quality, knowledge depth, and flagship benchmark posture.
| Field | Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 anthropic | OpenAI: GPT-5.2 openai |
|---|---|---|
| Reasoning label | Situational | Limited |
| Intelligence score | 44 | 34 |
| Intelligence Index | 44.4 | 33.6 |
| AA Intelligence Index | 44.4 | 33.6 |
| MMLU Pro | N/A | 81.4% |
| GPQA | 79.9% | 71.2% |
| HLE | 13.2% | 7.3% |
| Arena ELO | N/A | N/A |
Coding
Signals that matter for code generation, refactors, debugging, and software tasks.
| Field | Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 anthropic | OpenAI: GPT-5.2 openai |
|---|---|---|
| Coding score | 46 | 35 |
| AA Coding Index | 46.4 | 34.7 |
| LiveCodeBench | N/A | 0.669 |
| LiveBench | N/A | 0.669 |
| SWE Bench | N/A | N/A |
| SciCode | 46.9% | 40.4% |
Math
Published math-oriented signals, including both summary indexes and narrower benchmark cuts.
| Field | Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 anthropic | OpenAI: GPT-5.2 openai |
|---|---|---|
| Math score | N/A | 51 |
| AA Math Index | N/A | 51.0 |
| Math 500 | N/A | N/A |
| AIME | N/A | N/A |
| AIME 25 | N/A | 51.0% |
Agent / Tool Use
Signals that better reflect tool loops, long-running tasks, and agent-style workflows.
| Field | Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 anthropic | OpenAI: GPT-5.2 openai |
|---|---|---|
| Agent score | 56 | 41 |
| IFBench | 41.2% | 47.4% |
| TAU2 | 79.5% | 46.5% |
| TerminalBench Hard | 46.2% | 31.8% |
| LCR | 57.7% | 38.0% |
Latency / Speed
Interactive responsiveness and throughput signals from the public detail dataset.
| Field | Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 anthropic | OpenAI: GPT-5.2 openai |
|---|---|---|
| Latency tier | Balanced | Balanced |
| Speed label | Situational | Competitive |
| Speed score | 57 | 68 |
| Tokens per second | 50 | 61 |
| TTFT | 1.13s | 0.59s |
| AA Tokens per second | 53 | 61 |
| AA TTFT | 0.97s | 0.60s |
| First answer token | 0.97s | 0.60s |
Pricing
Published token pricing plus the lower-level OpenRouter and Artificial Analysis cost fields.
| Field | Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 anthropic | OpenAI: GPT-5.2 openai |
|---|---|---|
| Price tier | Mid-range | Budget |
| Price label | Competitive | Efficient |
| Price score | 62 | 86 |
| Input price | $3.00 | $1.75 |
| Output price | $15.00 | $14.00 |
| AA input price | $3.00 | $1.75 |
| AA output price | $15.00 | $14.00 |
| AA blended 3:1 | $6.00 | $4.81 |
| OR prompt price | $3.0000 | $1.7500 |
| OR completion price | $15.0000 | $14.0000 |
| OR request price | N/A | N/A |
| OR image price | N/A | N/A |
| OR audio price | N/A | N/A |
| OR web search price | $0.0100 | $0.0100 |
| OR cache read price | $0.0000 | $0.0000 |
| OR cache write price | $0.0000 | N/A |
| OR internal reasoning price | N/A | N/A |
Context
Window size and completion limits relevant to long-context tasks and workspace planning.
| Field | Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 anthropic | OpenAI: GPT-5.2 openai |
|---|---|---|
| Context tier | Large | Large |
| Context label | Above average | Above average |
| Context score | 100 | 88 |
| Primary context window | 1000K Tokens | 400K Tokens |
| OpenRouter context length | 1000K Tokens | 400K Tokens |
| Top provider context | 1000K Tokens | 400K Tokens |
| Max completion tokens | 128000 | 128000 |
Modality / Vision
Modalities stay visible near the decision surface so multimodal support is easy to compare.
| Field | Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 anthropic | OpenAI: GPT-5.2 openai |
|---|---|---|
| Vision support | Yes | Yes |
| Modalities | text, image->text, image | text, image, file->text, file |
| OpenRouter modality | text+image->text | text+image+file->text |
| OR input modalities | text, image | file, image, text |
| OR output modalities | text | text |
Provider Internals
FAQ
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