Three Top Models, Each with Unique Strengths
The 2026 frontier model competition comes down to three: OpenAI's GPT-5.5, Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.7, and Google's Gemini 3.5 Pro. Their overall capabilities are close, but each has distinct strengths.
Reasoning Ability
GPT-5.5 is the most balanced general reasoner. Math, logic, common sense, causal analysis — it consistently delivers high-quality answers. Its chain-of-thought is the most coherent in multi-step reasoning.
Claude Opus 4.7 excels at deep reasoning. Complex logic puzzles, multi-constraint problems, and tasks requiring backtracking — Claude often finds solutions GPT misses.
Gemini 3.5 Pro has improved dramatically in 2026, approaching GPT-5.5 levels. Its unique advantage is multimodal reasoning — analyzing charts and drawing conclusions from combined text/image/video input.
Coding Ability
The developer community has a clear consensus: Claude Opus 4.7 > GPT-5.5 > Gemini 3.5 Pro
Claude produces the cleanest code with the fewest bugs. It leads SWE-bench pass rates consistently. GPT-5.5 is also strong, with the advantage of speed and breadth (requirements analysis, architecture, testing). Gemini is good for simple-to-moderate tasks but occasionally makes careless errors on complex ones.
Multimodal
Gemini 3.5 Pro >> GPT-5.5 > Claude Opus 4.7
Gemini is the multimodal champion — text, images, video, audio, and code simultaneously. GPT-5.5 handles images and text well. Claude's multimodal support is the most limited.
Pricing
| Model | Input (¥/M) | Output (¥/M) |
|---|---|---|
| GPT-5.5 | ¥34.00 | ¥204.00 |
| Claude Opus 4.7 | ¥34.00 | ¥170.00 |
| Gemini 3.5 Pro | ¥10.20 | ¥61.20 |
Gemini is 1/3 the price of the other two.
How to Choose
Code quality → Claude Opus 4.7 All-around, stability → GPT-5.5 Multimodal, value → Gemini 3.5 Pro Agents → GPT-5.5 (most stable tool calling)
Pragmatic tip: use a routing strategy — cheap models for daily tasks, Claude for code, Gemini for multimodal, GPT for complex general tasks.
