Claude Opus 4.5 vs Claude Sonnet 4.6
Claude Opus 4.5 (2025) and Claude Sonnet 4.6 (2026) are frontier-tier reasoning models from Anthropic. Claude Opus 4.5 ships a 200k-token context window, while Claude Sonnet 4.6 ships a 1m-token context window. On MMLU PRO, Claude Opus 4.5 leads by 1.6 pts. On pricing, Claude Sonnet 4.6 costs $3/1M input tokens versus $5/1M for the alternative. This comparison covers specs, pricing, API access, capabilities, benchmarks, input and output token costs, and production fit for coding and agent workloads.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is ~67% cheaper at $3/1M; pay for Claude Opus 4.5 only for coding workflow support.
Decision scorecard
Local evidence first| Signal | Claude Opus 4.5 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | reasoning-heavy apps, multimodal apps, and tool-calling agents | reasoning-heavy apps, multimodal apps, and tool-calling agents |
| Decision fit | Coding, RAG, and Agents | Coding, RAG, and Agents |
| Context window | 200k | 1m |
| Cheapest output | $25/1M tokens | $15/1M tokens |
| Provider routes | 6 tracked | 6 tracked |
| Shared benchmarks | MMLU PRO leader | 7 shared |
Decision tradeoffs
- Claude Opus 4.5 holds a shared-benchmark lead on MMLU PRO, ahead by 1.6 points.
- Local decision data tags Claude Opus 4.5 for Coding, RAG, and Agents.
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 holds a shared-benchmark lead on Google-Proof Q&A, ahead by 2.9 points.
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the larger context window for long prompts, retrieval packs, or transcript analysis.
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the lower cheapest tracked output price at $15/1M tokens.
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 uniquely exposes Computer use and Parallel agents in local model data.
- Local decision data tags Claude Sonnet 4.6 for Coding, RAG, and Agents.
Monthly cost at traffic
Estimate token spend from the cheapest tracked input and output route or tier on this page.
Claude Opus 4.5
$10,250
Cheapest tracked route/tier: Microsoft Foundry
Claude Sonnet 4.6
$6,150
Cheapest tracked route/tier: OpenRouter
Estimated monthly gap: $4,100. Batch, cache, alternate speed tiers, and negotiated pricing are excluded from this local estimate.
Switch friction
- Provider overlap exists on OpenRouter, Anthropic, and AWS Bedrock; start route-level A/B tests there.
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 is $10/1M tokens lower on cheapest tracked output pricing before cache, batch, or negotiated discounts.
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 adds Computer use and Parallel agents in local capability data.
- Provider overlap exists on Microsoft Foundry, Anthropic, and GCP Vertex AI; start route-level A/B tests there.
- Claude Opus 4.5 is $10/1M tokens higher on cheapest tracked output pricing, so quality gains need to justify the spend.
- Check replacement coverage for Computer use and Parallel agents before moving production traffic.
Specs
| Specification | ||
|---|---|---|
| Released | 2025-11-01 | 2026-02-17 |
| Context window | 200k | 1m |
| Parameters | — | — |
| Architecture | Decoder Only | Decoder Only |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Openness | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Weights | Not released | Not released |
| Code | Unknown | Unknown |
| Commercial use | Commercial use: conditional | Commercial use: conditional |
| Knowledge cutoff | 2025-12 | 2025-08 |
Pricing and availability
| Pricing attribute | Claude Opus 4.5 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $5/1M tokens | $3/1M tokens |
| Output price | $25/1M tokens | $15/1M tokens |
| Providers |
Capabilities
| Capability | Claude Opus 4.5 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| Vision | Yes | Yes |
| Multimodal | Yes | Yes |
| Reasoning | Yes | Yes |
| JSON / Tool use | Yes | Yes |
| Structured outputs | Yes | Yes |
| Code execution | Yes | Yes |
| IDE integration | No | No |
| Computer use | No | Yes |
| Parallel agents | No | Yes |
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU PRO | 88.9 | 87.3 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 80.9 | 79.6 |
| Google-Proof Q&A | 87.0 | 89.9 |
| Massive Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding | 80.7 | 83.6 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 37.6 | 58.3 |
| Chatbot Arena | 1466.0 | 1459.0 |
| MMMU Pro | 73.9 | 75.6 |
Continue comparing
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- Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs DeepSeek V4 Pro
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Kimi K2.6
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Composer 2.5
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs GPT-5.5 Pro
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Gemini 3.5 Flash
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs GLM-5.1
- Claude Opus 4.7 vs Claude Sonnet 4.6
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Last reviewed: 2026-07-26. Data sourced from public model cards and provider documentation.