Claude Opus 4.6 vs ChatGPT 5.4: Full Report and Comparison, Feature Set, Pricing, Context Windows, Coding Performance, and Platform Positioning

Claude Opus 4.6 and ChatGPT 5.4 sit in the same frontier tier of general-purpose AI systems, though the similarity becomes much thinner once the comparison moves away from headline capability claims and into model posture, rollout status, context handling, pricing thresholds, and the way each vendor packages the model inside a wider product stack.

Both models are built for difficult work.

Both are presented as premium systems for coding, long documents, complex reasoning, and multi-step task execution.

Both belong to the one-million-token context class.

Both support very large outputs compared with ordinary language models.

That is where the superficial symmetry ends.

OpenAI presents GPT-5.4 as a broad flagship model for complex professional work, and it spreads that model across ChatGPT, the API, and Codex in a way that makes it feel like the standard high-end route across the entire OpenAI ecosystem.

Anthropic presents Claude Opus 4.6 differently, because it is framed less as the default broad flagship and more as the premium Opus path for the hardest tasks, especially when the work depends on agentic planning, long-horizon coding, and very large-context reasoning.

The practical difference is not small.

One model is easier to justify as a default top-tier production choice for mixed workloads.

The other is easier to justify as a deliberate premium lane when the buyer wants Anthropic’s strongest coding-and-agents posture and is prepared to accept a materially heavier token-cost structure.

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How the two models are positioned reveals two different flagship strategies.

GPT-5.4 is positioned as a broad frontier flagship for professional work, while Claude Opus 4.6 is positioned as a premium specialist for the hardest agentic and coding-heavy workloads.

OpenAI’s official positioning gives GPT-5.4 a very broad execution contract.

It is described as the company’s frontier model for complex professional work, and that language is reinforced by the fact that the same model identity runs across ChatGPT, the API, and Codex rather than being confined to one narrower surface.

This matters because it makes GPT-5.4 look like a platform-wide engine rather than just a premium option sitting above the rest of the stack.

It is meant to cover mixed professional use, which includes coding, document work, spreadsheet-heavy reasoning, deep research, tool-connected execution, and longer multi-step tasks that need reliability over duration rather than only sharp one-shot answers.

Claude Opus 4.6 is framed more narrowly and more sharply.

Anthropic presents it as the strongest Opus model for the hardest tasks, which gives it a distinctly premium identity inside the Claude family.

The emphasis is not on broadness for its own sake.

The emphasis is on top-end agentic planning, difficult coding, very long-context use, and the sort of professional workload where the buyer is explicitly reaching for Anthropic’s highest reasoning tier rather than its general-purpose default.

That difference shapes the entire comparison.

GPT-5.4 reads like the broad flagship that OpenAI wants to sit at the center of its high-end platform.

Claude Opus 4.6 reads like the premium specialist lane that Anthropic wants users to choose when simpler or cheaper Claude routes are no longer enough.

This distinction is easy to miss when both models are reduced to “frontier AI,” though it becomes obvious once the release language, the rollout structure, and the pricing posture are considered together.

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· GPT-5.4 is the broader flagship in the way OpenAI presents its high-end model stack.

· Claude Opus 4.6 is the more concentrated premium specialist in the way Anthropic presents its top reasoning tier.

· The comparison therefore begins with platform role, not only with raw capability.

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Official model posture

Area	ChatGPT 5.4	Claude Opus 4.6
Official posture	Frontier model for complex professional work	Premium Opus model for the hardest tasks
Main identity	Broad flagship across OpenAI’s core surfaces	Premium specialist inside the Claude stack
Core emphasis	Professional execution, coding, research, computer use	Agentic planning, coding, long-context reasoning
Practical reading	Default high-end route	Deliberate premium route

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Availability is strong on both sides, though the highest-end operating mode is not equally standardized.

Both models are live across consumer and API surfaces, while GPT-5.4’s strongest public operating posture is cleaner and Claude Opus 4.6’s strongest long-context posture is more conditional.

GPT-5.4 is confirmed in ChatGPT, in the OpenAI API, and in Codex.

That matters because the model is not only present, but present in a way that is visibly standardized across OpenAI’s most important high-end surfaces.

Its role inside the platform is straightforward.

The same flagship model identity appears in the major places where OpenAI wants serious work to happen.

Claude Opus 4.6 is also clearly live.

Anthropic confirms it through Claude-facing product surfaces, the Claude API, and major cloud deployment paths.

That gives it broad real-world presence rather than narrow laboratory status.

The difference is subtler than simple availability.

GPT-5.4’s strongest public posture is already fully mainline.

Claude Opus 4.6 reaches the same premium tier, though one of its most important high-end features, namely one-million-token context, is explicitly documented in a beta and platform-gated form rather than as a plain universally-on default across every relevant surface.

This does not make the model less real.

It does make its strongest operating mode more conditional.

That matters for organizations that want to treat a capability as a standard deployment assumption rather than as a top-end path that may depend on access conditions, platform surface, or additional rollout requirements.

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· GPT-5.4 has a cleaner mainline rollout posture in the reviewed fact base.

· Claude Opus 4.6 is broadly available, though its most aggressive long-context mode is less standard in rollout posture.

· The operational distinction is not whether the models are deployed, but how standardized their strongest mode is.

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Availability and rollout posture

Surface	ChatGPT 5.4	Claude Opus 4.6
Consumer app	Yes	Yes
API	Yes	Yes
Coding-oriented surface	Yes, via Codex	Yes, via Claude tooling and coding workflows
Highest long-context posture	Mainline	Beta and platform-gated
Rollout reading	Cleaner and more standardized	Broad but more conditional at the top end

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Context windows look similar in headline numbers, though the operational meaning is not the same.

The two models sit in the same one-million-token class on paper, though GPT-5.4 exposes that class more cleanly as a standard capability and Claude Opus 4.6 exposes it under a more conditional posture.

GPT-5.4 supports a published context window of 1,050,000 tokens and a maximum output of 128,000 tokens.

That combination matters because it gives the model both very large input capacity and very large output capacity without forcing the buyer to treat the long-context headline as an exceptional or gated state.

The model is therefore easy to read as a standard ultra-long-context flagship.

Claude Opus 4.6 supports a one-million-token context window and also supports 128,000 output tokens, which places it in the same practical frontier class.

The complication is not the number itself.

The complication is the rollout posture attached to that number.

Anthropic explicitly ties the one-million-token mode to a beta and platform-gated condition, which means the context story includes an access layer rather than existing only as a simple spec-sheet claim.

That distinction matters more than it first appears.

A context number has one meaning when it is a standard default assumption across normal deployment.

It has another meaning when it is tied to a more conditional route, even if the top-line capacity is nearly identical.

So the comparison should not stop at one million versus one million.

GPT-5.4 offers the slightly larger published window and the cleaner deployment story.

Claude Opus 4.6 offers the same general class of long-context capacity, though its strongest version of that story is more conditional in operational terms.

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· GPT-5.4 publishes 1.05M context and 128K output as a standard flagship capability.

· Claude Opus 4.6 reaches 1M context and 128K output, though its one-million-token mode is more conditional.

· Similar headline window size does not mean identical deployment posture.

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Context and output comparison

Area	ChatGPT 5.4	Claude Opus 4.6
Context window	1.05M	1M
Max output	128K	128K
Long-context status	Mainline published capability	Beta and platform-gated capability
Practical implication	Cleaner long-run default	Strong long-run route with more conditions

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Pricing creates one of the clearest hard separations between the two models.

Claude Opus 4.6 is materially more expensive than GPT-5.4 at the flagship API layer, and the premium becomes even more visible once larger prompts become routine.

This is not a minor pricing difference that only matters at extreme scale.

It is a structural difference that affects the model’s role from the beginning.

GPT-5.4 is priced at $2.50 per million input tokens, $0.25 per million cached input tokens, and $15 per million output tokens.

That places it in a relatively restrained frontier pricing bracket for a flagship model of this class.

Claude Opus 4.6 is priced at $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens, which already makes it substantially heavier before any long-prompt premium is applied.

The divergence becomes stronger when large contexts become normal.

OpenAI applies its higher pricing regime above 272K tokens.

Anthropic applies its higher regime above 200K tokens, and the premium rises to $10 per million input tokens and $37.50 per million output tokens.

This means that Claude Opus 4.6 is not only more expensive at the base layer.

It also reaches its heavier pricing posture earlier in long-prompt usage.

That fact alone changes deployment strategy.

GPT-5.4 is easier to justify as a broad flagship for mixed and repeated workloads, because the cost of using it often and widely remains more manageable.

Claude Opus 4.6 is easier to justify when the buyer is intentionally paying for a premium specialist lane rather than seeking the cheapest way to cover a broad high-end workload portfolio.

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· GPT-5.4 is materially cheaper than Claude Opus 4.6 at the flagship API layer.

· Claude Opus 4.6 reaches premium long-context pricing sooner than GPT-5.4.

· Cost discipline strongly favors GPT-5.4 when the goal is broad repeated deployment.

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Flagship API pricing

Area	ChatGPT 5.4	Claude Opus 4.6
Base input price	$2.50 / 1M	$5 / 1M
Base output price	$15 / 1M	$25 / 1M
Long-context premium threshold	Above 272K	Above 200K
High long-context price posture	Higher, but later	Higher, and earlier
Pricing identity	Lower-cost frontier flagship	Premium-cost specialist flagship

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Coding and agent behavior are strengths for both, though the emphasis differs enough to matter.

GPT-5.4 is framed as a broad production engine for mixed professional execution, while Claude Opus 4.6 is framed as the premium route for harder agentic planning and longer coding sessions.

OpenAI’s GPT-5.4 release emphasizes coding, tool search, deep research, disciplined multi-step execution, and native computer use.

That creates a broad operational identity.

The model is not only meant to reason well.

It is meant to do useful work across several categories of production workflow without forcing the user to move into a different top-end model for each type of task.

Claude Opus 4.6 is also strongly associated with coding and tool use, though Anthropic’s emphasis is more concentrated.

The model is repeatedly described through agentic planning, premium coding, data generation, and long-session reasoning rather than through one broad general productivity frame.

This distinction is not cosmetic.

GPT-5.4 looks like the flagship for mixed professional execution where documents, code, tools, and longer tasks all have to coexist under one stable default.

Claude Opus 4.6 looks like the specialist route when the buyer wants Anthropic’s strongest planning-and-coding behavior and expects that the task genuinely belongs in a premium lane.

Both models are serious in coding and agentic work.

The more useful split is therefore broad flagship versus concentrated premium specialist, not coding versus no coding.

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· GPT-5.4 is the broader mixed-workflow flagship.

· Claude Opus 4.6 is the sharper premium specialist for agentic planning and coding.

· The practical split is breadth of default use versus top-end specialist use.

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Execution specialization

Area	ChatGPT 5.4	Claude Opus 4.6
Broad professional workflows	Strongest default posture	Strong
Premium agentic planning	Strong	Strongest premium posture
Coding identity	Broad flagship coding plus Codex integration	Premium coding and long-session agent work
Best fit	Mixed top-end deployment	Hard-task specialist lane

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Benchmark evidence is stronger and easier to summarize on OpenAI’s side, though Anthropic’s premium-performance case remains serious.

GPT-5.4 has the clearest compact benchmark packaging, while Claude Opus 4.6 has strong official capability claims and supporting material that are disclosed less as one short public score sheet.

OpenAI publishes a compact public benchmark table for GPT-5.4 that includes GDPval at 83.0 percent wins or ties, SWE-Bench Pro at 57.7 percent, Terminal-Bench 2.0 at 75.1 percent, and OSWorld-Verified at 75.0 percent.

That is unusually useful because it gives a direct numerical snapshot of the model across several important task classes.

Claude Opus 4.6 has strong official performance evidence too, though the packaging is different.

Anthropic highlights leadership in agentic coding, search, tool use, finance, and long-context reasoning, and it supports that story with launch-page material and supporting documentation rather than one equally compact public score grid.

That difference has two consequences.

First, GPT-5.4 is easier to summarize quickly and easier to compare, because the benchmark presentation is cleaner.

Second, Claude Opus 4.6 is easier to read as a premium-performance story whose public evidence is serious but less condensed into a single easy scoreboard.

This is one reason the safest interpretation is differentiated rather than absolute.

GPT-5.4 has the stronger compact benchmark packaging.

Claude Opus 4.6 has a strong premium-performance case, though the reviewed material presents it in a more narrative and less table-centric way.

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· GPT-5.4 has the clearest compact public benchmark packaging in the reviewed source set.

· Claude Opus 4.6 has strong official evidence, though it is disclosed less as one simple score sheet.

· The evidence supports differentiated strengths more clearly than a universal winner claim.

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Public evaluation posture

Area	ChatGPT 5.4	Claude Opus 4.6
Public benchmark packaging	Clearest	Strong but less compact
Main public strength	Easy-to-read benchmark table	Strong premium-performance narrative and supporting materials
Cross-vendor simplicity	Higher	Lower
Safe reading	Broad flagship with strong public numbers	Premium specialist with serious but differently packaged evidence

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The cleanest selection logic is broad default flagship versus deliberate premium specialist.

GPT-5.4 is easier to justify as the default top-end route for mixed professional workloads, while Claude Opus 4.6 is easier to justify when the buyer specifically wants Anthropic’s strongest premium coding-and-agents lane and accepts the higher cost.

GPT-5.4 combines a cleaner mainline rollout posture, a slightly larger standard context window, the same 128K output ceiling, materially lower pricing, and a much clearer compact benchmark story.

That makes it the easier model to recommend when one flagship has to cover a wide set of serious professional workloads under stable and repeatable economic conditions.

Claude Opus 4.6 remains a very serious frontier option, though the case for choosing it is more specialized.

Its value is easiest to understand when the buyer wants Anthropic’s strongest reasoning-and-coding route specifically, expects agentic planning to be central rather than incidental, and is comfortable paying a noticeably heavier premium both at the base API layer and in long-context scenarios.

So the comparison does not end with a shallow winner line.

It ends with a stable split.

GPT-5.4 is the stronger broad flagship in the reviewed public evidence.

Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger premium specialist when the task and the platform preference genuinely call for Anthropic’s top-end lane rather than a broader default route.

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EXECUTION CONTRACT AND MODEL POSTURE

GPT-5.4 and Claude Opus 4.6 belong to the same frontier class, though the role each one plays inside its vendor stack is different enough that the comparison becomes clearer when it starts from product posture rather than from raw benchmark numbers.

GPT-5.4 is exposed by OpenAI as a broad flagship for complex professional work across ChatGPT, the API, and Codex, which gives it the shape of a default top-end engine for mixed workloads rather than a narrow premium lane reserved for exceptional cases.

Claude Opus 4.6 is exposed by Anthropic as the premium Opus route for the hardest tasks, with a sharper emphasis on agentic planning, coding, and high-difficulty long-context reasoning, so its identity is more concentrated and more explicitly specialist from the outset.

This distinction changes the entire comparison, because GPT-5.4 is easier to treat as the standard high-end route when one model must cover a wide range of serious professional tasks, while Claude Opus 4.6 is easier to treat as the premium path when the buyer is deliberately entering Anthropic’s strongest reasoning-and-coding tier.

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· GPT-5.4 is the broader flagship by official execution posture.

· Claude Opus 4.6 is the more concentrated premium specialist by official posture.

· The comparison therefore starts with platform role, not only with capability headlines.

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Flagship role by model

Area	ChatGPT 5.4	Claude Opus 4.6
Official posture	Frontier model for complex professional work	Premium Opus model for the hardest tasks
Main identity	Broad flagship across core OpenAI surfaces	Premium specialist inside the Claude stack
Strategic reading	Default high-end route	Deliberate premium route

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ROLLOUT MATURITY, CONTEXT HORIZON, AND WHAT IS ACTUALLY STANDARD

The two models sit in the same one-million-token class on paper, though the operational meaning of that fact is not symmetrical, because OpenAI publishes GPT-5.4’s long-context posture as a standard mainline capability while Anthropic attaches the strongest long-context posture of Claude Opus 4.6 to beta and platform-gated conditions.

GPT-5.4 is documented with 1.05M context and 128K output, and that pairing matters because it combines very large ingestion with very large generation inside a clean standard flagship profile rather than inside a special-access top layer.

Claude Opus 4.6 is documented with 1M context and 128K output, though Anthropic explicitly describes the one-million-token mode as beta, which means the model belongs in the same class of large-context systems while still asking the buyer to treat its strongest context posture as more conditional than GPT-5.4’s.

That distinction matters for real deployment, because a headline context number is more valuable when it can be treated as a default planning assumption rather than as a top-end route that depends on additional access conditions, headers, or tier posture.

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· GPT-5.4 has the cleaner standard long-context posture.

· Claude Opus 4.6 reaches the same general class with more conditionality around the strongest mode.

· Similar headline context size does not mean identical deployment maturity.

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Context and rollout maturity

Area	ChatGPT 5.4	Claude Opus 4.6
Context window	1.05M	1M
Max output	128K	128K
Long-context status	Mainline published capability	Beta and platform-gated capability
Practical implication	Cleaner long-run default	Strong long-run route with more access conditions

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CODING, TOOL USE, AND AGENTIC EXECUTION POSTURE

The two models are both official high-end choices for coding and tool-connected work, though they are stressed differently enough that one reads as a broad production engine and the other reads as a premium specialist lane for harder agentic sessions.

OpenAI frames GPT-5.4 around computer use, tool search, deep research, and disciplined multi-step execution, which makes it look like a model designed to stay stable across mixed professional workflows where coding, reasoning, document work, and tool orchestration all need to coexist under one default flagship.

Anthropic frames Claude Opus 4.6 around agentic planning, premium coding, and long-horizon task execution, which gives it a narrower but more intense identity in the comparison, especially for workloads where planning quality, persistence across longer sessions, and top-end coding behavior matter more than broad flagship coverage.

The useful split is therefore not that one has tools and the other does not.

The useful split is that GPT-5.4 is the broader mixed-workflow flagship, while Claude Opus 4.6 is the sharper premium route when the workload genuinely belongs in a specialist coding-and-agents lane.

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· GPT-5.4 is the stronger broad execution engine for mixed professional workflows.

· Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger premium specialist for harder agentic planning and long coding sessions.

· The real split is breadth of default use versus concentration of premium use.

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Execution specialization

Area	ChatGPT 5.4	Claude Opus 4.6
Broad professional workflows	Strongest default posture	Strong
Premium agentic planning	Strong	Strongest premium posture
Tool-search and computer-use identity	Very strong	Strong
Best fit	Mixed top-end deployment	Hard-task specialist lane

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PERFORMANCE EVIDENCE, BENCHMARK PACKAGING, AND WHERE THE COMPARISON IS STRONGEST

GPT-5.4 has the clearest compact benchmark packaging in the reviewed official material, which matters because it makes the performance case easier to summarize and easier to operationalize for buyers who need a clean public score story before they choose a flagship deployment path.

OpenAI publishes a short table including GDPval 83.0% wins or ties, SWE-Bench Pro (Public) 57.7%, Terminal-Bench 2.0 75.1%, and OSWorld-Verified 75.0%, which gives GPT-5.4 a very strong public-facing performance narrative across professional work, coding, agentic terminal tasks, and computer use.

Claude Opus 4.6 has strong official evidence too, though Anthropic packages it differently, using a mixture of highlighted claims around leadership in agentic coding, computer use, tool use, search, finance, and long-context performance, plus supporting materials that are less compressed into one small public score grid.

This means the comparison is not weak.

It means the public evidence is asymmetrical in format.

GPT-5.4 benefits from clearer score packaging, while Claude Opus 4.6 benefits from a strong premium-performance story that is more dispersed across launch claims and supporting material.

The safe conclusion is therefore differentiated rather than absolute, because the reviewed official evidence supports GPT-5.4 as the cleaner public benchmark flagship and supports Claude Opus 4.6 as the stronger premium specialist narrative without cleanly proving that one model dominates the other in every serious production condition.

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· GPT-5.4 has the clearest compact public benchmark table.

· Claude Opus 4.6 has strong official evidence, though it is disclosed less as one simple score sheet.

· The reviewed public evidence supports differentiated strengths more strongly than a universal winner claim.

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Public evidence posture

Area	ChatGPT 5.4	Claude Opus 4.6
Public benchmark packaging	Clearest	Strong but less compact
Main public strength	Easy-to-read benchmark table	Strong premium-performance narrative plus supporting materials
Cross-vendor simplicity	Higher	Lower
Safe interpretation	Broad flagship with strong public numbers	Premium specialist with serious but differently packaged evidence

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PRICE DISCIPLINE, ROUTING LOGIC, AND WHICH MODEL IS EASIER TO CHOOSE BY DEFAULT

The pricing layer turns the comparison from an abstract frontier-model debate into a much clearer deployment decision, because Claude Opus 4.6 is materially more expensive than GPT-5.4 at the flagship API layer and also moves into premium long-context pricing earlier.

GPT-5.4 is priced at $2.50 / 1M input and $15 / 1M output, with the higher regime beginning above 272K input tokens, which gives it a cost structure that is much easier to absorb when the goal is repeated, broad, top-end deployment across many professional tasks.

Claude Opus 4.6 is priced at $5 / 1M input and $25 / 1M output, with premium pricing above 200K tokens, which puts it in a clearly heavier lane both at base usage and at long-context usage.

That is why the cleanest routing logic is not subtle.

GPT-5.4 is easier to justify as the default top-end route, because it combines strong public benchmark packaging, cleaner rollout maturity, slightly larger standard context, the same output ceiling, and materially lighter cost.

Claude Opus 4.6 is easier to justify when the buyer specifically wants Anthropic’s strongest premium coding-and-agents route and is consciously willing to pay for that premium posture.

That split is the most stable reading of the official material, and it is stronger than any forced attempt to collapse the comparison into one blanket winner formula.

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· GPT-5.4 is the easier default high-end choice on cost-adjusted deployment logic.

· Claude Opus 4.6 is the clearer premium specialist choice when Anthropic’s strongest agentic-and-coding lane is the reason for selection.

· The cleanest practical split is broad default flagship versus deliberate premium specialist.

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Routing and price discipline

Area	ChatGPT 5.4	Claude Opus 4.6
Base input price	$2.50 / 1M	$5 / 1M
Base output price	$15 / 1M	$25 / 1M
Long-context premium threshold	Above 272K	Above 200K
Cleanest role	Default top-end flagship	Deliberate premium specialist

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