Claude Opus 4.5 vs Claude Sonnet 4.6: Specs & Benchmark Comparison

CharacteristicClaude Opus 4.5Claude Sonnet 4.6
CompanyAnthropicAnthropic
Release DateNovember 23, 2025February 17, 2026
Parameters
MultimodalYesYes
Context (input)200K200K
Context (output)64K64K
Input Price / 1M$5.00$3.00
Output Price / 1M$25.00$15.00
Average Score0.90.7
Benchmarks
GPQA0.90.9
MMMLU0.90.9
SWE-Bench Verified0.80.8

Visual Benchmark Comparison

Claude Opus 4.5
Claude Sonnet 4.6
GPQA0.9 vs 0.9
0.9
0.9
MMMLU0.9 vs 0.9
0.9
0.9
SWE-Bench Verified0.8 vs 0.8
0.8
0.8

Verdict

Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads in 2 out of 5 comparison categories.

Overall Performance

Both models show comparable average scores: Claude Opus 4.5 — 0.9, Claude Sonnet 4.6 — 0.7.

Programming

On SWE-Bench, both models are nearly equal: Claude Opus 4.5 — 0.8, Claude Sonnet 4.6 — 0.8.

API Cost

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is 1.7x cheaper: input $3.00/1M vs $5.00/1M tokens.

Context Window

Same context size: 200K tokens.

Recency

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is newer: released 2/17/2026 vs 11/23/2025.

More About These Models

Related Comparisons

The Claude Opus 4.5 and Claude Sonnet 4.6 comparison is updated for 2026. Data includes benchmark results, API pricing, context window size and other specifications. For more detailed information, visit the Claude Opus 4.5 or Claude Sonnet 4.6 page. See also the complete list of AI model comparisons.