Claude Sonnet 5 vs GPT-5.5
Two frontier models called the same way with the same files, and they aren't interchangeable for this job. Claude worked through the long documents. GPT-5.5 ran out of room and returned nothing on nine of them. Claude is also the cheaper of the two. On short printed documents they're close. Neither comes with any document product.
Both rows are a general model handed a file and a list of fields, the pipeline most engineering teams build first. Both are excellent on the typical short document. GPT's median result was over 95%, and on a few short forms it matched the best products in the test. If your documents were all one or two pages, you could pick either and be fine.
The separation is length, and it's dramatic. On registers, catalogs, and directories with hundreds of entries, GPT returned nothing usable on nine documents and a fraction on the rest, because a single call fills its answer budget and stops. Claude, called the same way, kept going and returned most of the entries, competitive with dedicated products and second only to DocuPipe on that material. That one behaviour is the whole fifteen-point gap. On handwriting and degraded scans Claude was also ahead. On Hebrew and Arabic layouts GPT was, modestly.
So resilience is lopsided. Neither has anything to tune, but Claude returned nothing empty and GPT returned nine empties, and no setting changes that. A GPT pipeline has to chunk long documents itself. A Claude pipeline mostly doesn't.
On price Claude is cheaper: $2 and $10 per million tokens against GPT's $5 and $30. Both are cents per page and both offer batch processing at a discount. Neither has a plan to buy or a free tier for production use.
On product there's nothing to compare, because neither has one. Both offer strong general APIs with native PDF input, Files APIs, batch modes, and structured outputs. GPT also accepts Office and spreadsheet files directly, and Claude returns citations back to the page. Neither has a dashboard, webhooks, document jobs, review, or retention controls beyond platform policy, and both leave the compliance story for whatever you build around them to you.
For document extraction specifically, Claude, and it isn't close. It scores higher, fails less, and costs less. Choose GPT only if you're already standardized on it and every document is short.
Any document extraction pipeline built on a raw model, especially one that will see multi-page documents.
Teams already standardized on OpenAI whose documents are all short, who'll accept a chunking layer for anything long.
How it scores, area by area
The accuracy score comes from the benchmark. Every other score is ours, with the reason written next to it. We use the same weights on every review and comparison.
| Area | Claude Sonnet 5 | GPT-5.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Accuracy35% of total | 9.2Ranked 2nd of 8 systems on the benchmark. | 7.6Ranked 5th of 8 systems on the benchmark. |
| Resilience15% of total | 7.0No settings to tune and nothing returned empty, but a few ordinary forms came back badly misread with no warning, and there is no layout stage to catch them. | 4.0Nine documents came back empty and there is no setting that fixes it; you have to build the chunking yourself. |
| Price15% of total | 9.0$2 and $10 per million tokens; a few cents per page at most. | 8.0$5 and $30 per million tokens, the priciest direct model, still only cents per page; batch at half price. |
| Getting started10% of total | 3.0No document product. You build upload, review and results tooling yourself. | 3.0No document product. You build the tooling yourself. |
| API and integration10% of total | 5.0Excellent general SDKs, native PDF input, a Files API, batch mode and structured outputs; no document jobs, webhooks or pipeline. | 5.0Strong general SDKs, PDF and Office input, a Files API, batch at half price and structured outputs; no document jobs or webhooks. |
| Data control7.5% of total | 5.0Platform policy only; zero retention for eligible organisations. Nothing document-specific. | 5.0Platform policy only. Nothing document-specific. |
| Compliance7.5% of total | 6.0Platform certifications apply to the API; your pipeline is your responsibility. | 6.0Platform certifications apply to the API; your pipeline is your responsibility. |
| Overallweighted | 7.2weighted score out of 10 | 6.1weighted score out of 10 |
How each area is scored
- Accuracy (35%). The benchmark result, on a 0 to 10 scale.
- Resilience (15%). Does it just work? Fewer modes to choose, no tuning to reach the ranked result, no runs that fail outright, and no documents that come back quietly empty. Informed by the benchmark, judged by us.
- Price (15%). Published cost per page for parse plus extraction, cheapest scoring highest. Unpublished pricing is marked down.
- Getting started (10%). How far you get without a sales call: a dashboard, a free tier with no card, help authoring schemas, a test environment.
- API and integration (10%). Webhooks and which tier they are on, SDKs, no-code connectors, whether the API is built around document jobs at all.
- Data control (7.5%). Deletion controls, scheduled retention, zero-retention availability and on which tier, choice of region.
- Compliance (7.5%). Certifications stated on public pages: SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA with a BAA, GDPR, private deployment options.
By document type
Average accuracy on each group of benchmark documents, both systems on the same files. Every document and score is on the evidence page.
| Document type | Claude Sonnet 5 | GPT-5.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Statements, filings, reports2 to 5 pages · 21 documents | 92.3% Good | 85.1% Good |
| Short forms, invoices, receiptsone page · 30 documents | 91.7% Good | 88.7% Good |
| Long registers, catalogs, directories6 pages and up · 21 documents | 91.3% Good | 50.4% Weak |
| Non-English documents12 languages · 25 documents | 85.2% Good | 69.4% Mixed |
| Scans and photosimages, not PDFs · 7 documents | 80.1% Good | 88.7% Good |
Price, product, and policies
Full reviews: Claude Sonnet 5, GPT-5.5.
| Claude Sonnet 5 | GPT-5.5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Per token through the Anthropic API. No document-specific product or plan. | Per token through the OpenAI API. No document-specific product or plan. |
| Entry price | $2 per million input tokens, $10 per million output tokens. | $5 per million input tokens, $30 per million output tokens. |
| Cost per page | Depends on page size and how much you ask it to return; typically a fraction of a cent to a few cents per page. | Depends on page size and output length; typically a cent to several cents per page, higher than the other two direct models. |
| Free tier | No ongoing free tier for API use. | No ongoing free tier for API use. |
| Pay as you go | Yes. Pure usage billing. | Yes. Pure usage billing; batch processing at half price. |
| Dashboard | No document product. A console workbench for prompts; upload, review and results tooling is yours to build. | No document product. A playground for prompts; upload, review and results tooling is yours to build. |
| Webhooks | None for document jobs. You run the pipeline. | None for document jobs. You run the pipeline. |
| API and SDKs | Official SDKs in Python, TypeScript, Java, Go, Ruby, C# and PHP. PDF input up to 600 pages per request, a Files API, batch processing at reduced cost, structured outputs and citations. | Official SDKs in Python, TypeScript and others. PDF, Office and spreadsheet input up to 50 MB per request, a Files API, a batch API at half price, structured outputs. |
| Data retention | Governed by Anthropic's API data policies; zero-retention arrangements exist for eligible organizations. Nothing document-specific. | Governed by OpenAI's API data policies. Nothing document-specific. |
| Compliance | Anthropic's platform certifications apply to the API; your pipeline around it is your responsibility. | OpenAI's platform certifications apply to the API; your pipeline around it is your responsibility. |
We checked these against the vendors' own pricing and documentation pages on 2026-09-11. Sources: Claude Sonnet 5: platform.claude.com; GPT-5.5: developers.openai.com. Prices change, so confirm before you budget.
Frequently asked
Which is better for document extraction, Claude or GPT-5.5?
Claude, in our benchmark: 91.73% to 76.48%. The gap is almost entirely long documents, where GPT returned nothing on nine of them and Claude returned most of the content. Claude is also cheaper per token.
Do Claude and GPT cost the same for document extraction?
No. Claude is $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output. GPT-5.5 is $5 and $30. Both are cents per page, and both offer batch processing at a discount.
Scores are macro-average field accuracy from the DocuBench 0.2.0, 72-document run. Every document, answer key, and raw extraction is open in the explorer; the scoring rules are on the methodology page, and the replication kit re-runs the scorer. A document a system could not process scores zero rather than being dropped.