The most recent launch of GPT-5 has taken the world by storm. OpenAI’s latest flagship mannequin has obtained blended evaluations – whereas some reward its capabilities, others spotlight its shortcomings. This made me marvel: Is GPT-5 really superior to the unique favourite, GPT-4o?
Personally, GPT-4o was my go-to LLM for the whole lot from textual content summarization to picture era and information evaluation. Now that OpenAI has changed it with GPT-5, I made a decision to place each fashions to the take a look at. Is that this improve genuinely evolutionary, or a rushed transfer that may diminish ChatGPT’s attraction?
Let the battle of the GPTs start!
GPT 5 and GPT 4o: A Fast Reminder
Let’s shortly dive into particulars concerning the two chatGPT fashions that we are going to be testing on this weblog: GPT-5 and GPT 4o
GPT-5
Launched final week, GPT-5 now stands as ChatGPT’s most superior mannequin. OpenAI’s newest multimodal LLM introduces agentic capabilities and a ‘unified system’ for process evaluation. This technique robotically determines whether or not a question requires deep reasoning or fundamental processing. In contrast to earlier fashions, GPT-5 follows a ‘learn-by-doing’ strategy. It reveals elevated empathy whereas being much less agreeable than its predecessors. Together with this GPT-5 comes with enhanced coding, writing and vibecoding powers
Discover extra in my earlier article on GPT-5.
GPT-4o
Launched final yr, GPT-4o (the place “o” means “omni”) was the first-of-its-kind mannequin. This multimodal modified the way in which individuals used ChatGPT. The mannequin got here with enhanced coding and visible evaluation capabilities. GPT-4o got here with speech recognition and speech evaluation options too. The mannequin got here with elevated processing pace and decreased response latency. OpenAI’s GPT-4o generated extra pure and wise responses, and was in a position to entry instruments and provides real-time data.
To know extra, checkout this text on GPT 4o.
GPT 5 vs GPT 4o: Characteristic Comparability
Characteristic | GPT-4o | GPT-5 |
Launch Date | Could 2024 | Aug 2025 |
Modalities | Textual content, Picture, Audio | Textual content, Picture, Audio, Video |
Context Window (ChatGPT) | ~128k tokens | 256k tokens |
Context Window (API) | ~128k tokens | 400k tokens |
Reasoning Mode | Single mannequin | Twin-mode: Quick + Deep Reasoning |
Hallucination Charge | Low | Lowest but amongst OpenAI fashions |
Personalization | None | Character presets + tone management |
Device Integration | Restricted | Gmail, Calendar, code instruments, extra |
Protected Completions | No | Sure – bounded, helpful solutions |
SWE-bench Verified | 30.8% accuracy | 74.9% accuracy |
AIME 2025 (Math) | 71% | 94.6% (with out instruments) |
VideoMMMU | 58.8% | 81.1% |
HealthBench | 31.6% | 46.2% |
Goal Use Instances | Actual-time interplay, artistic duties | Complicated reasoning, enterprise workflows |
GPT 5 vs GPT 4o: Job Comparability
Now, let’s put each fashions to the take a look at by evaluating their efficiency on the next duties:
- Content material creation
- Picture Era
- Coding
- Picture Evaluation
- Reasoning
Let the GPT-5 vs GPT-4o battle start!
Job 1: Content material Creation
Learn the article at https://www.analyticsvidhya.com/weblog/2024/07/building-agentic-rag-systems-with-langgraph/ to know the method of making a vector database for Wikipedia information. Then, present a concise abstract of the important thing steps.”
GPT-5 Response:

GPT-4o Response:

Remark:
The response generated by GPT-5 is the concise abstract that an individual educated on the subject would need. The steps are all listed in correct order and include simply sufficient context. Then again, GPT-4o’s response is a abstract of all of the steps talked about within the weblog. It lists all of the steps that have been lined within the weblog in the identical method as mentioned there. The distinction within the strategy of the 2 fashions is: GPT-5 merges the factors to generate a concise abstract of your entire course of, whereas GPT-4o creates a concise abstract of all of the steps lined within the weblog.
Job 2: Picture Era
The picture is of working of a voice agent. It has 3 major elements
Speech-to-text (STT): Captures and converts your spoken phrases into textual content.
Agentic logic: That is your code (or your agent), which figures out the suitable response
Textual content-to-speech (TTS): Converts the agent’s textual content reply again into audio that’s spoken aloud.
Convert this fundamental picture into vibrant picture.
GPT-5 Response:

GPT-4o Response:

Remark:
The duty was easy, and each fashions executed it fairly properly. Beginning with GPT-5, it created a vibrant picture with popping colours. The picture it generated had textual content and icons; nonetheless, there was a minor error – a small arrow connecting the mic icon with the TTS field. As for the picture generated by GPT-4o, it used strong colours, making it much less vibrant. The strengths of GPT-4o’s picture have been the audio enter and output sources that it included.
Job 3: Coding
Fundamental HTML code for a word-counting web site.
GPT-5 Response:

GPT-4o Response:

Remark:
GPT-5 took a while to generate the code for this question, particularly for the phrase counter web site. Nonetheless, the ultimate output was fairly spectacular. The UI/UX and options got here collectively to create a totally practical word-counting webpage. Then again, GPT-4o’s output felt lackluster compared. The UI/UX was fundamental, providing solely the core word-counting function with out further refinements. Its design additionally appeared considerably outdated
Job 4: Picture Evaluation
Calculate the output of this circuit diagram.
GPT-5 Response:

GPT-4o Response:

Remark:
GPT-5 answered this query shortly, analyzing each the picture and its elements effectively. It appropriately recognized the half-wave rectifier, learn the values marked on the diagram, and utilized the right logic to calculate the output present and voltage values. In distinction, GPT-4o struggled with this process. Whereas it acknowledged the output waveform, it didn’t course of different vital elements. Most notably, GPT-4o couldn’t extract the mandatory values from the picture to carry out any calculations.
Job 5: Reasoning
Remedy the next Sudoku and provides the ultimate answer as a picture.

GPT-5 Response:

GPT-4o Response:

Remark:
GPT-5 initially struggled with picture interpretation, taking up three minutes to course of the enter. Slightly than fixing the puzzle independently, it requested affirmation of a number of values inside the picture. After I manually supplied all of the row values, the mannequin efficiently processed and solved the puzzle, yielding an accurate answer, although requiring vital person help.
GPT-4o, against this, failed to unravel the puzzle fully. It merely populated all lacking values with zeros and introduced this as its output answer.
GPT-5 vs GPT-4o: Last Verdict
Choosing a transparent winner has by no means been more difficult. Right here’s how the 2 LLMs carried out throughout totally different duties:
Job | GPT-5 | GPT-4o |
---|---|---|
Content material Creation | Extra concise | Higher summarized |
Picture Era | Extra vibrant | Extra artistic |
Coding | Nice | Restricted functionality |
Picture Evaluation | Common | Common |
Reasoning | Wonderful | Fundamental functionality |
Is there a transparent winner between the 2? The reply is not any. Efficiency varies considerably by process:
- GPT-5 dominates in coding and reasoning
- GPT-4o holds its personal in content material creation and picture era/evaluation
- Pace vs. Depth: GPT-4o delivers sooner responses, whereas GPT-5 generally hesitates between thorough evaluation and fast era
Context issues: Keep in mind that GPT-4o is a yr older. Whereas GPT-5 advantages from more moderen coaching information and agentic optimizations, is it really groundbreaking in comparison with its predecessor? Not precisely.
Conclusion
Because the world calls for GPT-4o’s comeback, I wholeheartedly agree.
Whereas GPT-5 has improved since Day 1 (now outperforming its Day 3 outcomes), its rushed launch left customers struggling to adapt. The reality is, GPT-5 solely marginally surpasses GPT-4o on particular duties, making it painfully laborious to desert our beloved GPT-4o for one thing that feels merely “a tad higher.” Maybe OpenAI wanted extra rigorous testing earlier than launch. However now that it’s stay, we will solely watch its evolution.
At this time? I’d signal any petition to convey again GPT-4o. ChatGPT has modified, and never for the higher. Let me know your ideas within the remark part.
PS: I took GPT 4o outputs from our earlier blogs:
Login to proceed studying and luxuriate in expert-curated content material.