Claude Opus vs GPT Astra
The practical version of the frontier question, because Opus 5 costs half what Astra does, $5 and $25 per million tokens against $10 and $50, and Anthropic recommends it as the default for most workloads. Astra is the more capable model on the hardest end-to-end tasks and clearly ahead on computer use. Most teams should establish that Opus fails a task before paying twice as much to fix it.
| Claude Opus | GPT Astra | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | OpenAI |
| Current release | Opus 5 | GPT-6 Astra |
| Tier | Frontier | Frontier |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Cost | Premium | Frontier price |
| Modalities | text, vision | text, vision |
| Open weights | No | No |
Cost is a tier, not a quote, providers change prices often. Check Anthropic and OpenAI before you commit. Last updated 2026-09-04.
Which one to pick
Claude OpusAnthropic · Opus 5
Agentic coding and multi-step engineering work, near the ceiling, at half the price
Reach for it when- The default for agentic coding, at half the token price
- Enterprise work where the cost of a long agent run is the constraint
- Reasoning-effort control to trade depth against spend
GPT AstraOpenAI · GPT-6 Astra
The hardest end-to-end work, computer use, and long agentic runs that span applications
Reach for it when- Tasks that need the model to operate software rather than write it
- The hardest end-to-end problems where capability decides the outcome
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