AI Model Cost and Performance Guide | Generated by AI
Here’s a clearer breakdown of the benchmark scores and API pricing for each model—Claude 4 Opus (also noted as Claude Opus 4), GPT‑5 (standard/full), GPT‑5 Mini, GPT‑5 Nano, plus o3 (OpenAI), and Claude 4 Sonnet—without using tables, to keep things neat and readable.
Benchmark Performance (SWE-bench)
This reflects how well models perform on software engineering tasks:
- Claude 4 Opus (May 14, 2025): 67.60
- GPT‑5 (Aug 7, 2025, medium reasoning): 65.00
- Claude 4 Sonnet (May 14, 2025): 64.93 (SWE-bench)
Takeaway: Claude 4 Opus leads slightly in SWE-bench performance, followed closely by GPT-5 and Claude-Sonnet.
API Pricing (per million tokens)
Claude 4 Opus
- Input: $15
- Output: $75 (Anthropic, LaoZhang AI, Simon Willison’s Weblog)
GPT-5 (standard/full)
- Input: $1.25
- Cached input (when reused): $0.125
- Output: $10 (OpenAI)
GPT-5 Mini
GPT-5 Nano
o3-mini (for context)
- Pricing available via o4‑mini reference:
- Input: $1.10, Output: $4.40 (Simon Willison’s Weblog)
Claude 4 Sonnet
- Input: $3, Output: $15 (LaoZhang AI)
Quick Comparison Highlights
- Best performance: Claude 4 Opus slightly outperforms both GPT-5 and Claude Sonnet in coding benchmarks.
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Lowest cost per token:
- GPT-5 Nano is the cheapest by far—perfect for lightweight tasks like summarization.
- GPT-5 Mini offers a balance of speed and affordability.
- GPT-5 standard remains quite cost-effective, especially with cheap caches.
- Claude models, both Opus and Sonnet, are significantly more expensive per token but justify their pricing via stronger reasoning and agent capabilities.
Summary (clear and concise):
- Claude 4 Opus: Top performance, high cost ($15 in / $75 out).
- GPT-5 (full): Great performance (just behind Opus), much cheaper ($1.25 in / $10 out).
- GPT-5 Mini: Mid-tier budget-friendly option ($0.25 in / $2 out).
- GPT-5 Nano: Ideal for lightweight tasks or large-scale low-cost use ($0.05 in / $0.40 out).
- Claude 4 Sonnet: Middle-ground cost/performance ($3 in / $15 out), but benchmark slightly below the others.
Let me know if you’d like help estimating the monthly cost for a particular usage pattern, or need comparisons factoring in prompt caching and batch discounts!