OpenAI o3 vs Claude Opus 5.5: Which AI Model Should You Choose?
Pricing, context windows, latency, capabilities, and a one-line code switch — everything you need to pick the right model.
Choose Claude Opus 5.5 for long documents (1.0M tokens context). Choose OpenAI o3 for shorter prompts where the smaller window keeps latency and cost down.
Side-by-side specs
| Spec | OpenAI o3 | Claude Opus 5.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Anthropic |
| Category | Text & Chat | Text & Chat |
| Input cost / 1M tokens | $2.40 | $4.80 |
| Output cost / 1M tokens | $9.60 | $24.00 |
| Context window | 200K tokens | 1.0M tokens |
| Max output tokens | 100,000 | 128,000 |
| Avg. latency | — | — |
| Featured | — | Yes |
| New | — | Yes |
| Capabilities | text image | text image |
Pricing example
A typical chat workload of 100,000 input tokens plus 50,000 output tokens.
100K in × $2.40 + 50K out × $9.60
100K in × $4.80 + 50K out × $24.00
For this workload, OpenAI o3 is cheaper than Claude Opus 5.5 by $0.96 per request.
Switch in one line
Both models live behind Railwail's OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Replace the model string and you are done.
import OpenAI from "openai";
const client = new OpenAI({
apiKey: process.env.RAILWAIL_API_KEY,
baseURL: "https://railwail.com/v1",
});
// Before — using OpenAI o3
let r = await client.chat.completions.create({
model: "o3",
messages: [{ role: "user", content: "Hello" }],
});
// After — switched to Claude Opus 5.5
r = await client.chat.completions.create({
model: "claude-opus-5-5",
messages: [{ role: "user", content: "Hello" }],
});from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(
api_key=os.environ["RAILWAIL_API_KEY"],
base_url="https://railwail.com/v1",
)
# Before — using OpenAI o3
r = client.chat.completions.create(
model="o3",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}],
)
# After — switched to Claude Opus 5.5
r = client.chat.completions.create(
model="claude-opus-5-5",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}],
)# Before — using OpenAI o3
curl https://railwail.com/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $RAILWAIL_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"model": "o3",
"messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}]
}'
# After — switched to Claude Opus 5.5
curl https://railwail.com/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $RAILWAIL_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"model": "claude-opus-5-5",
"messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}]
}'Which one wins for...
Quick verdicts derived from public specs. Always validate on your own workload.
Higher coding category match or larger context wins.
Bigger context window helps maintain long-form coherence.
The larger context window is the deciding factor.
Multimodal/vision support is required for image inputs.
Lower average latency wins for interactive UX.
The model with the lower input-token price wins.
Frequently asked questions
Try OpenAI o3 and Claude Opus 5.5 side by side
One API key, one endpoint, both models. Start free — no credit card required.