Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.8 or GPT-5.5?

Claude Opus 4.8. On a task of 1,500 input and 500 output tokens across 3 calls, Claude Opus 4.8 costs $0.06000 per task against $0.06750 for GPT-5.5, which makes it 1.13x cheaper (a 11% saving).

How much do Claude Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.5 charge per million tokens?

Claude Opus 4.8: $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens. GPT-5.5: $5 input and $30 output. These are published list rates as of August 2026, excluding cached, batch and long-context tiers.

What does a million tasks cost on Claude Opus 4.8 vs GPT-5.5?

At the same fixed profile, one million tasks cost $60,000 on Claude Opus 4.8 and $67,500 on GPT-5.5. The gap comes entirely from list-price differences, not from any difference in the work done.

Model price comparisons · August 2026

Claude Opus 4.8 vs GPT-5.5: API pricing compared

Same task, same tokens, two invoices. Every figure on this page is computed from our open pricing dataset, not copied from a blog post.

Claude Opus 4.8 is 1.13x cheaper than GPT-5.5 on a realistic task profile of 1,500 input and 500 output tokens per call, 3 calls per task: $0.06000 against $0.06750 per task, a 11% saving on identical work. Run a million tasks a month and that is the difference between $60,000 and $67,500.

Model	Input $/1M tok	Output $/1M tok	Output multiple	$/task	$/1M tasks
Claude Opus 4.8Anthropic · frontier	$5	$25	5x	$0.06000	$60,000
GPT-5.5OpenAI · frontier	$5	$30	6x	$0.06750	$67,500

Monthly bill at three volumes

Tasks / month	Claude Opus 4.8	GPT-5.5	Gap
10,000	$600	$675	$75
100,000	$6,000	$6,750	$750
1,000,000	$60,000	$67,500	$7,500

Where the money goes on each

Claude Opus 4.8 prices output at 5x its input rate, so on this profile output is 63% of its task cost. GPT-5.5 prices output at 6x input, putting output at 67% of cost. The model with the higher output multiple rewards capping response length more; the one with the higher input share rewards prompt caching and context trimming more. Cost tells you nothing about quality: run both on twenty of your real cases before deciding, and treat the cheaper model as the default until it demonstrably fails.

Break-even against a dedicated GPU

Against a $2/hour dedicated instance ($1,460/month fixed), self-hosting overtakes Claude Opus 4.8 at 24,333 tasks per month and overtakes GPT-5.5 at 21,630 tasks per month. The full method is in the self-hosting break-even guide.

Pricing the self-hosted side? Compare on-demand GPU rates:

Compare GPU cloud pricing →

Plug your own token counts into the $/task calculator, or read the full ten-model pricing comparison.

Compare against other models

Frequently asked

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.8 or GPT-5.5?: Claude Opus 4.8. On a task of 1,500 input and 500 output tokens across 3 calls, Claude Opus 4.8 costs $0.06000 per task against $0.06750 for GPT-5.5, which makes it 1.13x cheaper (a 11% saving).
How much do Claude Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.5 charge per million tokens?: Claude Opus 4.8: $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens. GPT-5.5: $5 input and $30 output. These are published list rates as of August 2026, excluding cached, batch and long-context tiers.
What does a million tasks cost on Claude Opus 4.8 vs GPT-5.5?: At the same fixed profile, one million tasks cost $60,000 on Claude Opus 4.8 and $67,500 on GPT-5.5. The gap comes entirely from list-price differences, not from any difference in the work done.