Model comparison
GPT-3.5-turbo vs GPT-5.2 Codex
GPT-5.2 Codex is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.6 to 23.2 on the Noometry Index. GPT-3.5-turbo costs 6.4× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-5.2 Codex's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 0 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- The widest gap is in coding, where GPT-5.2 Codex leads 45.5 to 23.9.
- GPT-3.5-turbo is cheaper at $0.50 / $1.50 per million input/output tokens, against $1.75 / $14 for GPT-5.2 Codex.
- GPT-5.2 Codex accepts more context: 400K tokens versus 16K.
Side by side
| GPT-3.5-turbo | GPT-5.2 Codex | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 23.2 | 42.6 |
| Released | 2023-03-01 | 2025-12-18 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 16K | 400K |
| Max output | 4K | 128K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.50 | $1.75 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $1.50 | $14 |
| Results tracked | 44 | 5 |
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Category by category
Coding GPT-5.2 Codex leads
GPT-3.5-turbo: 23.9 (#331), GPT-5.2 Codex: 45.5 (#71)
| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | GPT-5.2 Codex |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 72.8% |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1339 |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | — | 66.3% |
| WeirdML | 3.5% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 39.1% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1136 | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 50.6% | — |
| ALE-Bench | — | 1,300 |
| HumanEval+ | 70.7% | — |
| MBPP+ | 69.7% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
GPT-3.5-turbo: —, GPT-5.2 Codex: 41.0 (#22)
| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | GPT-5.2 Codex |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 66.5% |
| METR Time Horizons | 21.5% | — |
Reasoning Not comparable
GPT-3.5-turbo: 13.8 (#332), GPT-5.2 Codex: —
| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | GPT-5.2 Codex |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1108 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 3% | — |
| DTBench | 48.5% | — |
| LMCA | 9.7% | — |
| Adversarial NLI | 58.1% | — |
| BIG-Bench Hard | 61.6% | — |
| CommonsenseQA 2.0 | 57% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 118.55 | — |
| ForecastBench | 50.4 | — |
| WinoGrande | 81.6% | — |
Math Not comparable
GPT-3.5-turbo: 6.3 (#327), GPT-5.2 Codex: —
| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | GPT-5.2 Codex |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 0% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 2.2% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1142 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 15.9% | — |
| GSM8K | 57.8% | — |
Knowledge Not comparable
GPT-3.5-turbo: 10.0 (#303), GPT-5.2 Codex: —
| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | GPT-5.2 Codex |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 28% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1070 | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | 87.4% | — |
| BoolQ | 87% | — |
| MMLU | 71.4% | — |
| OpenBookQA | 86% | — |
| TriviaQA | 85.8% | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
GPT-3.5-turbo: 31.5 (#258), GPT-5.2 Codex: —
| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | GPT-5.2 Codex |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1108 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1075 | — |
| LMArena French | 1118 | — |
| LMArena German | 1090 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1043 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1019 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1123 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1121 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
GPT-3.5-turbo: 57.9 (#262), GPT-5.2 Codex: —
| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | GPT-5.2 Codex |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1119 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
GPT-3.5-turbo: 34.0 (#254), GPT-5.2 Codex: —
| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | GPT-5.2 Codex |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1121 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
GPT-3.5-turbo: 25.3 (#305), GPT-5.2 Codex: —
| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | GPT-5.2 Codex |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1125 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1092 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 451 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1117 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is GPT-3.5-turbo better than GPT-5.2 Codex?
GPT-5.2 Codex is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.6 to 23.2 on the Noometry Index. GPT-3.5-turbo costs 6.4× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-5.2 Codex's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, GPT-3.5-turbo or GPT-5.2 Codex?
GPT-3.5-turbo is cheaper. It lists at $0.50 per million input tokens and $1.50 per million output tokens; GPT-5.2 Codex lists at $1.75 and $14.
Is GPT-3.5-turbo or GPT-5.2 Codex better for coding?
GPT-5.2 Codex scores higher on coding benchmarks: 45.5 versus 23.9 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
GPT-5.2 Codex does, with 400K tokens against 16K.
How many benchmarks do GPT-3.5-turbo and GPT-5.2 Codex share?
0 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-3.5-turbo has 44 scored results on Noometry and GPT-5.2 Codex has 5.