Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Sonnet 5: Specs & Benchmark Comparison
Claude Opus 5 and Claude Sonnet 5 both come from Anthropic, Claude Sonnet 5 was released in June 2026, and Claude Opus 5 followed a month later in July 2026.
The two models share 9 published benchmarks. Claude Opus 5 leads on 9 of them. The widest gaps are on Terminal-Bench 4.0, where Claude Opus 5 scores 51.8% against 12.4%; DeepSWE 1.1, where Claude Opus 5 scores 68.8% against 54.0%. Averaged across everything we track, Claude Opus 5 sits at 55.0% and Claude Sonnet 5 at 58.4%.
Claude Sonnet 5 is the cheaper API at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, roughly 3 times cheaper than Claude Opus 5 at $5 and $25. Both accept a context window of about 1M tokens. Both accept text and images as input.
| Characteristic | Claude Opus 5 | Claude Sonnet 5 |
|---|---|---|
| Company | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Release Date | July 24, 2026 | June 30, 2026 |
| Parameters | — | — |
| Multimodal | Yes | Yes |
| Context (input) | 1.0M | 1.0M |
| Context (output) | 128K | 64K |
| Input Price / 1M | $5.00 | $2.00 |
| Output Price / 1M | $25.00 | $10.00 |
| Average Score | 55.0% | 58.4% |
| Benchmarks | ||
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 | 51.8% | 12.4% |
| DeepSWE 1.1 | 68.8% | 54.0% |
| FrontierCode | 53.4% | 38.8% |
| AutomationBench | 26.0% | 13.5% |
| FrontierCode 1.1 | 53.4% | 42.7% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 64.7% | 57.4% |
| BrowseComp | 90.8% | 84.7% |
| Legal Agent Benchmark | 11.7% | 5.8% |
| HealthBench Professional | 59.8% | 57.8% |
Visual Benchmark Comparison
Verdict
Both models show equal results — the choice depends on your specific use case.
Both models show comparable average scores: Claude Opus 5 — 0.5, Claude Sonnet 5 — 0.6.
Claude Sonnet 5 is 2.5x cheaper: input $2.00/1M vs $5.00/1M tokens.
Same context size: 1M tokens.
Claude Opus 5 is newer: released 7/24/2026 vs 6/30/2026.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better for coding — Claude Opus 5 or Claude Sonnet 5?
Which model is cheaper — Claude Opus 5 or Claude Sonnet 5?
Which has a larger context window — Claude Opus 5 or Claude Sonnet 5?
The Claude Opus 5 and Claude Sonnet 5 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 5 or Claude Sonnet 5 page. See also the complete list of AI model comparisons.