A benchmark-driven comparison of GPT-5.4 and Claude Opus 4.6 across 12 evaluations covering coding, tool use, reasoning, visual understanding, and agentic tasks. GPT-5.4 leads on terminal coding (Terminal-Bench 2.0: 75.1% vs 65.4%), computer use (OSWorld: 75% vs 72.7%), visual reasoning (MMMU Pro: 81.2% vs 73.9%), multi-tool orchestration (MCP Atlas: 67.2% vs 59.5%), and novel problem-solving (ARC-AGI-2: 73.3% vs 68.8%). Claude Opus 4.6 edges ahead on agentic web search (BrowseComp: 84% vs 82.7%) and long-context workloads due to flat pricing. Both are essentially tied on hard reasoning benchmarks. GPT-5.4 is 40-50% cheaper at base rates but doubles in price past 272K tokens. The recommended strategy is routing tasks to whichever model performs best, using a gateway like Portkey to manage both.
Table of contents
TL;DR: Quick decision frameworkGPT-5.4 vs Claude Opus 4.6: Model specificationsGPT-5.4 vs Claude Opus 4.6: Coding benchmarksBrowseComp: agentic web searchTerminal-Bench 2.0: agentic terminal codingSWE-Bench: agentic codingGDPval: professional knowledge workMMMU Pro: visual reasoningTool use: τ²-bench and MCP AtlasOSWorld: computer useHumanity's Last Exam: multidisciplinary reasoningARC-AGI-2: novel problem-solvingGPQA Diamond: graduate-level reasoningGPT-5.4 vs Claude Opus 4.6: Pricing comparisonGPT 5.4 vs Claude Opus 4.6: How to choose?When to choose whatThe bottom lineSort: