Prices → Compare → GPT-5.6 Sol vs Claude Sonnet 5
GPT-5.6 Sol vs Claude Sonnet 5: API cost compared
GPT-5.6 Sol lists at $2.500 in / $15.00 out per 1M tokens. Claude Sonnet 5 lists at $2.000 in / $10.00. Sticker price only tells you so much — below is what each actually costs across eight production workloads.
Side by side
| GPT-5.6 Sol | Claude Sonnet 5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Anthropic |
| Input per 1M | $2.500 | $2.000 |
| Output per 1M | $15.00 | $10.00 |
| Cached input per 1M | $0.250 | $0.200 |
| Context window | 400k | 200k |
| Blended per 1M (3:1) | $5.625 | $4.000 |
Monthly cost by workload
Caching applied at each workload's typical hit rate. This is where the two models actually separate.
| Workload | GPT-5.6 Sol | Claude Sonnet 5 | Cheaper | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customer support chatbot | $366.00 | $257.80 | Claude Sonnet 5 | $108.20 (30%) |
| RAG document Q&A | $490.00 | $368.00 | Claude Sonnet 5 | $122.00 (25%) |
| Coding agent | $261.25 | $185.00 | Claude Sonnet 5 | $76.25 (29%) |
| Bulk summarization | $3,465 | $2,692 | Claude Sonnet 5 | $773.00 (22%) |
| Structured data extraction | $4,675 | $3,490 | Claude Sonnet 5 | $1,185 (25%) |
| Long-form content generation | $636.50 | $429.20 | Claude Sonnet 5 | $207.30 (33%) |
| Email triage agent | $1,081 | $805.00 | Claude Sonnet 5 | $276.25 (26%) |
| Translation pipeline | $4,112 | $2,810 | Claude Sonnet 5 | $1,302 (32%) |
How to read this
Claude Sonnet 5 is cheaper on the majority of these workloads, but "majority" is not the decision. The output:input price ratio is 6.0 for GPT-5.6 Sol and 5.0 for Claude Sonnet 5. If your traffic is output-heavy — long-form drafting, translation — the model with the lower output price wins regardless of what the input price suggests. If you are input-heavy — RAG, bulk summarization, agents re-reading a codebase — the cached input rate matters more than either headline number.
Cost is also not the only axis. This site does not benchmark quality, latency, or rate limits, and a model that is 3x cheaper but needs two attempts per task is not cheaper. Use these numbers to size a bill, then validate on your own evals.
Run your own numbers
Cost calculator
Enter your own numbers, or start from a workload preset. Costs are monthly and update as you type.
| Model | In /1M | Out /1M | Monthly | vs best |
|---|