Claude Fable 5.2 vs GPT-6.1 Sol vs Gemini 4 Argon: Price, Benchmarks

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Updated: 9 November 2026

Claude Fable 5.2 launched on 9 November 2026 as Anthropic’s strongest generally available model, and the obvious question is how it stacks up against the two models many developers actually use every day: OpenAI’s GPT-6.1 Sol and Google’s Gemini 4 Argon. There is a catch: the three companies do not publish results on the same set of benchmarks, and Anthropic’s own launch table compares Fable 5.2 with GPT-6 Astra and Gemini 4 Carbon, not with Sol or Argon. So below I separate what each vendor says, where the numbers come from, and what you pay. Every benchmark figure is labelled with its source.

Prices: Fable 5.2 vs GPT-6.1 Sol vs Gemini 4 Argon

Per token, Fable 5.2 is four times the price of GPT-6.1 Sol and of Gemini 4 Argon at its introductory rate, and twice Argon’s price from December. Fable 5.2 has no long-context surcharge across its 1M-token window, while GPT-6.1 Sol charges more above 272,000 input tokens.

Benchmarks, vendor by vendor

The only benchmarks where I found published numbers for both Fable 5.2 and Gemini 4 Argon come from two different vendors: Anthropic reports Fable 5.2, and Google reported Argon in the evaluation table it published with Gemini 4 Carbon on 28 October 2026. Different harnesses can shift results by a few points; Google’s figure for Opus 5.5 on Chartography, for example, is 66.3% while Anthropic reports 64.4%. Read the table as a rough guide, not a head-to-head test.

OpenAI presented GPT-6.1 Sol on 29 September 2026 with results on other benchmark versions (for example DeepSWE 1.1 and OSWorld 2.0), so I am not putting its numbers next to Fable’s. What the table does show: on coding and science tasks Fable 5.2 is far ahead of Argon, while on business automation and chart reading the two are within two points of each other, with Argon costing a quarter of the price per token until the end of November.

Independent index

Artificial Analysis, which runs the same test set on every model, had GPT-6.1 Sol at 51.8 points and Gemini 4 Argon at 52.6 points on its Intelligence Index v5.0 in late October 2026, with Claude Opus 5.5 at 57.6. A full run of the index cost $0.72 with Sol, $1.62 with Argon and $5.98 with Opus 5.5. Fable 5.2 had no published score on launch evening, so this only tells you how far Sol and Argon sit below Anthropic’s previous top model.

My test: Fable 5.2 vs Opus 5.5, GPT-6.1 Sol and Gemini 4 Argon

On launch evening I ran the same 27 tasks through all four models via OpenRouter (medium effort): coding with 136 unit tests, 13 logic puzzles, 10 questions about 3 images and 3 writing tasks. The writing tasks were in Polish, because the test was built for my Polish site. Mythos 5.2 was not available to test.

• All four models scored 100% on code, puzzles and vision, so this set did not separate them.
• Speed: a 500-word essay took Fable 5.2 a median 19.1 s against 26.2 s for Fable 5.1, 27% less time, in line with Anthropic’s “up to 30% faster”.
• Cost of the 27 tasks: Fable 5.2 $0.75, Opus 5.5 $0.52, Gemini 4 Argon $0.14, GPT-6.1 Sol $0.11.
• Fable 5.2 costs twice as much per token as Opus 5.5, but only 1.44 times as much per task, because it used fewer tokens (16,434 vs 23,839).
• Median time to first token: Fable 5.2 2.24 s, Opus 5.5 2.65 s, GPT-6.1 Sol 1.48 s, Gemini 4 Argon 3.44 s.

Full results and raw data (in Polish): Claude Fable 5.2 test on promptowy.com.

Which one to choose

GPT-6.1 Sol and Gemini 4 Argon are the value picks: a fraction of Fable’s price and, on the independent index, within a few points of each other. Fable 5.2 is the model to pay for when the task is long, agentic and hard to get right: large code changes, multi-step research, science workloads and computer-use automation, where Anthropic’s numbers show the biggest lead. If you are deciding between Fable 5.2 and Anthropic’s own cheaper model, read my Claude Fable 5.2 vs Opus 5.5 comparison; prices and access are in the Claude Fable 5.2 guide.

FAQ

Is Claude Fable 5.2 better than GPT-6.1 Sol?

There is no common vendor benchmark to settle it. Anthropic compares Fable 5.2 with GPT-6 Astra, OpenAI’s flagship, and reports Fable ahead on most tests. GPT-6.1 Sol costs a quarter of Fable’s price per token.

Is Claude Fable 5.2 better than Gemini 4 Argon?

On coding and science benchmarks, Anthropic’s figures for Fable 5.2 are well above Google’s figures for Argon (69.9% vs 55.0% on FrontierSWE v2). On AutomationBench they are almost equal.

Which is cheapest: Fable 5.2, GPT-6.1 Sol or Gemini 4 Argon?

GPT-6.1 Sol and Gemini 4 Argon both cost $2 / $10 per million tokens until 30 November 2026; Argon rises to $4 / $20 on 1 December. Fable 5.2 costs $8 / $40.

// read moreGemini 4 Carbon test: 50+ tasks vs Argon, Claude Fable 5.2 and GPT-6.1 SolAI ToolsClaude Fable 5.2 vs GPT-6 Astra and Gemini 4 CarbonBenchmarksGemini 4 Argon vs GPT-6.1 Sol: Which Model to ChooseBenchmarks

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