Claude Opus vs GPT Sol
Two mid-frontier models at almost the same price, now that GPT-6 Astra sits above Sol and Claude Fable 5.1 sits above Opus. Sol is the broader generalist; Opus 5 leads on agentic and coding work and is the model Anthropic itself tells you to start with. Sol is a little cheaper per token. The deciding factor is usually which ecosystem your code already lives in, not raw capability.
| Claude Opus | GPT Sol | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | OpenAI |
| Current release | Opus 5 | GPT-5.6 Sol |
| Tier | Frontier | Frontier |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Cost | Premium | Premium |
| 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- Multi-step agentic coding where the model runs for a long time without supervision
- Large refactors that must respect an existing codebase's conventions
- You want reasoning-effort control to trade cost against depth
GPT SolOpenAI · GPT-5.6 Sol
Frontier-grade generalist work now that Astra has taken the top of the line
Reach for it when- You are already deep in OpenAI tooling and want the least migration friction
- Slightly lower token cost on the same class of work
- General knowledge and scientific work rather than shipping code
Related comparisons
- Claude Opus vs GPT AstraThe 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.
- GPT Astra vs GPT SolThe within-OpenAI upgrade question.
- Claude Opus vs Gemini ProTwo different bets.
- GPT Sol vs Gemini ProSol is the stronger all-round generalist; Gemini 3.1 Pro is the better value and the reasoning-benchmark leader.
- Claude Opus vs GrokBoth are pitched at agentic coding.
- GPT Sol vs GrokSol is the safer default and scores higher overall; Grok 4.6 matches it on some agentic work at a fraction of the short-context price.