# Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs GPT-5.6 Sol

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is the cheaper of the 2: for the same tokens, 3 read for each 1 written, GPT-5.6 Sol costs 2 times as much. Below are both price lists, what 8 everyday jobs cost a month on each, and how many tokens the same text takes on each, which can change the answer.

- Page, with a calculator for your own job: https://tecyfy.com/prices/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-vs-gpt-5-6-sol
- Makers: Claude Sonnet 5.5 from Anthropic, GPT-5.6 Sol from OpenAI

## Price per million tokens, in US dollars

| | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GPT-5.6 Sol |
| --- | --: | --: |
| Input | $2 | $4 |
| Cached input | $0.10 | $0.40 |
| Cache write | $2.50 | $5 |
| Output | $10 | $20 |
| Blend, 3 read for each 1 written | $4 | $8 |
| Batch input | $1 | $2 |
| Batch output | $5 | $10 |
| Long prompt input (above 272K on GPT-5.6 Sol) | $2 | $8 |
| Long prompt output | $10 | $30 |
| Context window, tokens | 1M | 1.05M |
| Capability score (Epoch Capabilities Index; GPT-5 is 150) | 164 | 162 |
| Longest answer, tokens | 128K | 128K |

GPT-5.6 Sol: OpenAI calls this a promotional price, available at least until 21 November 2026.

Price change, Claude Sonnet 5.5: Cached input went from $0.20 to $0.10 per million tokens. The price of a cache write did not change.

Price change, GPT-5.6 Sol: The price became $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens, which OpenAI gives as 20% lower for input and 33% lower for output. OpenAI calls it promotional pricing, available at least until 21 November 2026.

## The same text, counted by each maker

Our lesson "How AI writes" (https://tecyfy.com/learn/how-ai-works/how-ai-writes), about 1,700 words of English:

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: about 2,100 to 3,600 tokens. Anthropic does not publish its tokenizer. It says Claude 4.7 and later produce about 30 percent more tokens for the same text than earlier models, and an independent test counted TypeScript at 1.73 times OpenAI's figure. The range runs from OpenAI's count to 1.75 times it.
- GPT-5.6 Sol: 2,053 tokens. GPT-5.6 is counted with o200k_base, the tokenizer OpenAI publishes for it, so its count is exact. OpenAI has not published the tokenizer of GPT-6, so its count is the same o200k_base figure, marked as about.

## What 8 everyday jobs cost a month on each

Each job at its usual runs a day, for 30 days, at the standard price.

| Job | Tokens in, out, runs a day | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GPT-5.6 Sol |
| --- | --- | --: | --: |
| A chat question | 300, 500, 100 | $16.80 | $33.60 |
| A hard question, with thinking | 300, 1,400, 100 | $43.80 | $87.60 |
| A long report, summarised | 60,000, 2,000, 20 | $84.00 | $168 |
| A 40-turn agent task | 2,800,000, 40,000, 10 | $364 | $878 |
| A support bot's reply | 4,000, 300, 2,000 | $432 | $888 |
| Sort a message into a category | 250, 5, 50,000 | $825 | $1,650 |
| Read an invoice into fields | 1,500, 250, 1,000 | $165 | $330 |
| Review a pull request | 25,000, 4,500, 50 | $143 | $285 |

## Questions

### Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5.5 or GPT-5.6 Sol?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is cheaper: $2 per million tokens read and $10 per million written, against $4 and $20 on GPT-5.6 Sol. On a mix of 3 tokens read for each 1 written, GPT-5.6 Sol costs 2 times as much.

### Which is better, Claude Sonnet 5.5 or GPT-5.6 Sol?

They cannot be told apart on the Epoch Capabilities Index, an independent score from Epoch AI that combines over 50 benchmarks: Claude Sonnet 5.5 scores 164 and GPT-5.6 Sol 162, within the range of doubt around each (GPT-5 is 150). So choose on price and on 10 tasks of your own.

### What does a support bot cost a month on Claude Sonnet 5.5 and GPT-5.6 Sol?

At 2,000 replies a day, each reading 4,000 tokens (50 percent of them from cache) and writing 300, it costs $432 a month on Claude Sonnet 5.5 and $888 on GPT-5.6 Sol: GPT-5.6 Sol costs 2.1 times as much for this job.

### What does an AI agent task cost on Claude Sonnet 5.5 and GPT-5.6 Sol?

One 40-turn task that reads 2,800,000 tokens in all, 90 percent of them from cache, and writes 40,000, costs $1.21 on Claude Sonnet 5.5 and $2.93 on GPT-5.6 Sol. At 10 tasks a day that is $364 and $878 a month.

### Which has the larger context window, Claude Sonnet 5.5 or GPT-5.6 Sol?

GPT-5.6 Sol, with 1.05M tokens against 1M on Claude Sonnet 5.5. The window holds your instructions, the files you attach, the conversation so far and the answer, all at once.

### Does the same text take the same number of tokens on Claude Sonnet 5.5 and GPT-5.6 Sol?

No. Our lesson "How AI writes", 1,700 words long, is about 2,100 to 3,600 tokens on Claude Sonnet 5.5 and 2,053 on GPT-5.6 Sol. Each maker cuts text its own way, and every extra token is paid for at the model's price.

### Can I pay less on Claude Sonnet 5.5 and GPT-5.6 Sol for work that can wait?

Yes, on both. With a batch, where you collect the answers later instead of at once, Claude Sonnet 5.5 costs $1 per million tokens read and $5 written, and GPT-5.6 Sol $2 and $10.

## Sources

- [Anthropic: API prices](https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing)
- [OpenAI: API prices](https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/pricing)
- [Epoch Capabilities Index, by Epoch AI (CC BY 4.0)](https://epoch.ai/benchmarks/eci)

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