GPT-5.5 vs. Claude Opus 4: Same Price In, Different Price Out

If you're shopping between OpenAI and Anthropic's flagship models right now, here's something worth knowing: they both charge $5.00 per million input tokens. That's the same starting point. But then they diverge — GPT-5.5 hits $30.00/1M on output, while Claude Opus 4 (all three variants: -6, -7, and -8) comes in at $25.00/1M out. That's a 20% difference on the side where most of your bill actually lands.

For context, if you're running a workload that generates 50 million output tokens a month, GPT-5.5 runs you $1,500 versus $1,250 for Opus 4. Same input cost either way.

Now, if those prices feel steep, you've got real options. Claude Sonnet 4 drops to $3.00 in / $15.00 out. Gemini 3.1 Pro goes $2.00 in / $12.00 out. And at the budget end, DeepSeek V4 Flash is sitting at just $0.14 in / $0.28 out — that's roughly 100x cheaper on output than GPT-5.5.

The flagship models earn their price in quality for certain tasks, but don't assume you need them. Match the model to the job.