Compare/GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning) vs Claude Opus 4.8 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)

GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning)vsClaude Opus 4.8 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)

Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.

OpenAI

GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning)

Input
$5/M
Output
$30/M
Speed
65 tok/s
TTFT
0.87s
Anthropic

Claude Opus 4.8 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)

Input
$5/M
Output
$25/M
Speed
61 tok/s
TTFT
25.40s

Winner by Category

Cheaper
Claude Opus 4.8 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)
Faster (tok/s)
GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning)
Lower Latency
GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning)
Benchmarks (0-7)
Claude Opus 4.8 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)

Pricing Comparison

MetricGPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning)Claude Opus 4.8 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)
Input ($/M tokens)$5$5
Output ($/M tokens)$30$25
Cost for 1M input + 100K output tokens:
GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning)$8.00
Claude Opus 4.8 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)$7.50

Speed Comparison

Output Speed (tokens/s) — higher is better
GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning)
65 tok/s
Claude Opus 4.8 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)
61 tok/s
Time to First Token (seconds) — lower is better
GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning)
0.87s
Claude Opus 4.8 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)
25.40s

Benchmark Comparison

Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks

Intelligence Index
35.455.7
Coding Index
56.574.3
Math Index
GPQA Diamond
76.8%92.0%
MMLU-Pro
LiveCodeBench
AIME 2025
MATH-500
Humanity's Last Exam
12.6%45.7%
SciCode
47.3%53.5%
IFBench
46.1%62.2%
TerminalBench
49.2%58.3%
GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning)0 wins
7 winsClaude Opus 4.8 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is cheaper, GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning) or Claude Opus 4.8 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)?

Claude Opus 4.8 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $10.00/M tokens vs $11.25/M for GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning).

Which model performs better on benchmarks?

Claude Opus 4.8 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) wins 7 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 0 for GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning). See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.

Which is faster for real-time applications?

GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning) generates tokens faster at 65 tok/s vs 61 tok/s. GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning) also has lower time-to-first-token (0.87s vs 25.40s).

When should I use GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning) vs Claude Opus 4.8 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)?

Choose based on your priorities: Claude Opus 4.8 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) for lower cost, Claude Opus 4.8 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) for stronger benchmark performance, and GPT-5.5 (Non-reasoning) for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.