Anthropic vs Anthropic

Claude 4.6 Opus vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet

Compare Claude 4.6 Opus and Claude 4.5 Sonnet across pricing, context window, capabilities, benchmarks, and API access to choose the better fit for long-context workloads versus reasoning-heavy tasks.

Overview Comparison

Structured side-by-side differences for the highest-signal model metadata.

Claude 4.6 Opus
Claude 4.5 Sonnet

Provider

The entity that currently provides this model.

Claude 4.6 Opus Anthropic
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Anthropic

Model ID

The routed model identifier exposed by upstream providers.

Claude 4.6 Opus anthropic/claude-opus-4.6
Claude 4.5 Sonnet anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5

Input Context Window

The number of tokens supported by the input context window.

Claude 4.6 Opus 1M tokens
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 200,000 tokens

Maximum Output Tokens

The number of tokens that can be generated by the model in a single request.

Claude 4.6 Opus 128,000 tokens tokens
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 64,000 tokens tokens

Open Source

Whether the model's code is available for public use.

Claude 4.6 Opus No
Claude 4.5 Sonnet No

Release Date

When the model was first released.

Claude 4.6 Opus Feb 04, 2026
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Sep 29, 2025

Knowledge Cut-off Date

When the model's knowledge was last updated.

Claude 4.6 Opus February 2026
Claude 4.5 Sonnet September 2025

API Providers

The providers that currently expose the model through an API.

Claude 4.6 Opus
OpenRouter
Claude 4.5 Sonnet
OpenRouter

Modalities

Types of data each model can process or return.

Claude 4.6 Opus
Text Image File
Claude 4.5 Sonnet
Text Image File Code

Pricing Comparison

Compare current token pricing before you choose the cheaper or more scalable API option.

Claude 4.6 Opus Anthropic
Input price $5.00 Per 1M tokens
Output price $25.00 Per 1M tokens
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Anthropic
Input price $3.00 Per 1M tokens
Output price $15.00 Per 1M tokens

Capabilities Comparison

See where each model overlaps, where they differ, and which one supports more of the features you care about.

Capability
Claude 4.6 Opus
Claude 4.5 Sonnet
Adaptive Thinking Automatically adjusts the amount of reasoning effort applied based on task complexity, allocating deeper computation to harder problems and less to simpler ones.
Claude 4.6 Opus Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet
Advanced Reasoning Applies multi-step reasoning to problems in domains including finance, law, medicine, and STEM, with improved knowledge depth compared to earlier Claude generations.
Claude 4.6 Opus
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
Agentic Coding Handles long-horizon software development tasks including architecture, implementation, and deployment, with benchmark results on Terminal-Bench 2.0 cited in the model overview.
Claude 4.6 Opus Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet
Agentic Task Execution Designed to sustain coherent, autonomous work on complex multi-step tasks — including file editing, command execution, and test running — across extended sessions.
Claude 4.6 Opus
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
Agentic Web Search Performs deep, multi-step web research to locate hard-to-find information, with BrowseComp cited as a benchmark for this capability in the model overview.
Claude 4.6 Opus Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet
Code Generation Generates, edits, and debugs code across complex software engineering tasks, ranking at the top of the SWE-bench Verified leaderboard for real-world coding ability.
Claude 4.6 Opus
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
Complex Reasoning Applies multi-step reasoning across rigorous multidisciplinary tasks, with performance on Humanity's Last Exam cited as a benchmark reference in the model overview.
Claude 4.6 Opus Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet
Computer Use Can interact with real computer interfaces such as navigating GUIs, managing files, and running tools, scoring 61.4% on the OSWorld benchmark.
Claude 4.6 Opus
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
File
Claude 4.6 Opus Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
Image
Claude 4.6 Opus Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
Large Context Window Processes up to 1 million tokens in a single session (currently in beta), enabling analysis of entire codebases, lengthy documents, or large data sets without truncation.
Claude 4.6 Opus Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
MCP Integration Compatible with Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, allowing the model to connect to external data sources and tools through a standardized interface.
Claude 4.6 Opus
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
MCP Server Support Connects to Model Context Protocol servers, allowing the model to interact with external data sources and services through a standardized interface.
Claude 4.6 Opus Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet
Professional Knowledge Work Handles economically valuable tasks in domains such as finance and legal analysis, with GDPval-AA cited as a benchmark evaluation in the model overview.
Claude 4.6 Opus Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet
Reasoning
Claude 4.6 Opus Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
Structured Output
Claude 4.6 Opus Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
Subagent Orchestration Can coordinate and manage teams of subagents, parallelizing work across tools to complete complex, multi-stage tasks with minimal human intervention.
Claude 4.6 Opus Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet
Text
Claude 4.6 Opus Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
Tool Use Accepts tool definitions at inference time and can call external functions or APIs, enabling integration with custom workflows and automated pipelines.
Claude 4.6 Opus Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
Tools
Claude 4.6 Opus Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported

Benchmark Comparison

Shared benchmark rows make it easier to compare performance where both models have published scores.

Benchmark Claude 4.6 Opus Claude 4.5 Sonnet
ARC-AGI-2
Novel abstract reasoning and pattern recognition
Claude 4.6 Opus 68.8%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet N/A
BigLaw Bench
Legal reasoning and analysis tasks
Claude 4.6 Opus 90.2%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet N/A
GPQA Diamond
PhD-level science questions (biology, physics, chemistry)
Claude 4.6 Opus 84.0%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 72.7%
HLE
Questions that challenge frontier models across many domains
Claude 4.6 Opus 18.6%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 7.1%
LiveCodeBench
Real-world coding tasks from recent competitions
Claude 4.6 Opus N/A
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 59.0%
MMLU-Pro
Expert knowledge across 14 academic disciplines
Claude 4.6 Opus N/A
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 86.0%
OSWorld
Autonomous computer use and desktop tasks
Claude 4.6 Opus N/A
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 61.4%
SciCode
Scientific research coding and numerical methods
Claude 4.6 Opus 45.7%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 42.8%
SWE-bench Verified
Real GitHub issues requiring multi-file code fixes
Claude 4.6 Opus 80.8%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 77.2%
Terminal-Bench
Agentic coding and terminal command tasks
Claude 4.6 Opus N/A
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 50.0%
Terminal-Bench 2.0
Agentic coding and terminal command tasks
Claude 4.6 Opus 65.4%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet N/A
τ²-bench Retail
Agentic tool use in retail scenarios
Claude 4.6 Opus N/A
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 86.2%
τ²-bench Telecom
Agentic tool use in telecom scenarios
Claude 4.6 Opus N/A
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 98.0%
Community discussion

What Reddit discussions say about Claude 4.6 Opus vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet

Claude 4.6 Opus and Claude 4.5 Sonnet are both surfacing live Reddit discussions, giving this comparison a community layer beyond specs and benchmarks.

The most visible threads right now are clustered in r/LocalLLaMA, r/singularity, r/ClaudeAI.

Claude 4.5 Sonnet r/singularity 1,356 upvotes 188 comments September 29, 2025
Claude 4.5 Sonnet is here

[https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-4-5](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-4-5)

Open Reddit thread
Claude 4.5 Sonnet r/singularity 367 upvotes 56 comments December 22, 2025
Zhipu AI releases GLM-4.7: Beating GPT-5.2 and Claude 4.5 Sonnet in Coding & Reasoning Benchmarks

Zhipu AI (Z.ai) officially released **GLM-4.7** today, December 22, 2025. The new flagship shows major gains in coding and complex reasoning, specifically targeting Western SOTA models.

**LMArena Code Arena (Blind Test):** #1 among open-source models, outperforming **GPT-5.2**.

**LiveCodeBench V6:** Scored **84.8**, surpassing **Claude 4.5 Sonnet**.

**AIME 2025 (Math):** Outperformed both **Claude 4.5 Sonnet** and **GPT-5.1**.

**Human Last Exam (HLE):** Scored **42%** (38% improvement over GLM-4.6), approaching GPT-5.1 performance.

**τ²-Bench:** Reached parity with Claude 4.5 Sonnet in real-world interaction.

**Technical Specs & Features:**

**Context Window & Speed:** 200K tokens (128K max output) and 55+ tokens per second.

**Thinking Mode:** Includes a dedicated "Deep Thinking" mode for multi-step reasoning.

**Agentic Coding:** Optimized for end-to-end task execution in tools like Claude Code, Cline and Roo Code.

**Pricing:** Launching a $3/month plan for direct integration into coding agents.

**Source: Z.ai Official (GLM 4.7 Docs)**

Open Reddit thread
Claude 4.6 Opus r/cursor 329 upvotes 83 comments April 9, 2026
How I use Cursor 10+ hours a day without torching my Claude Opus 4.6 limits

Anyone else here doing full-stack Next.js in Cursor and watching the Claude quota evaporate before lunch? I used to be in the same boat — massive context windows from all the components, pages, and DB logic would smoke the default limits fast.
Not anymore. I’ve been on this setup for weeks and basically never hit a wall while still getting top-tier answers. Here’s exactly what I do:

**1. .cursorrules is non-negotiable**
I keep one in the root of every project. The key line I added: “Never explain the code to me. Just output the code blocks.”
That single rule saves me thousands of output tokens a day. No more walls of “here’s what I changed and why” — just the goods.

**2. Stopped using Cursor’s built-in Claude quota**
I killed the default Cursor Pro subscription for the heavy stuff. Instead I use my own API keys and point Cursor’s “OpenAI Compatible” base URL at LLM Router Gateway.
Inside [llmrouter](https://llmrouter.app/) routing settings I set up simple tags routing like this:

* **UI & CSS tweaks**: gemini-3.1-flash → gpt-5.4-mini
* **Deep backend / complex logic**: claude-opus-4.6 → deepseek-v3.2
* **General / quick questions**: llama-4-scout

I sorted the fallback chains by speed vs intelligence. The router auto-detects the query type, so 90% of my UI polish and small fixes go to Gemini (basically free + huge context). I only actually hit Claude Opus 4.6 when I’m doing nasty database refactors or tricky architecture stuff. My Anthropic bill dropped \~70% overnight.

**3. Cmd+K for everything small**
Don’t open the full chat sidebar just to rename a variable or extract a component. Highlight the code, hit Cmd+K, let a fast model handle the inline edit. Saves a ton of tokens and feels way snappier.
That’s it. Super simple but it completely changed how much I can actually use Cursor in a day.

How are you all managing the limits? Using a Cursor Team? Or did you build your own router hacks too? Drop your setups — always looking to steal better ideas.

Open Reddit thread
Claude 4.6 Opus r/LocalLLaMA 272 upvotes 123 comments April 14, 2026
These "Claude-4.6-Opus" Fine Tunes of Local Models Are Usually A Downgrade

Time and time again I find posts about these fine tunes that promise increased intelligence and reasoning with base models, and I continuously try them, realize they're botched, and delete them shortly after. I sometimes do resort to a lower quant since they are bigger, in this case, a 40b variant of Qwen 3.5 27b, but they seem to always let me down. I've resorted to not downloading any model with "Claude Opus 4.6" in the name.

Kudos to everyone who tries to make the foundation models more intelligent, but imo, it never works.

Note that this example is anecdotal evidence on a single prompt, but it's overall always the case of decreased intelligence when using with a local agent setup + llama.cpp in WSL2. This is irrespective of the quant as well - I've tried many.

One thing to notice however, the reasoning/thinking is significantly less, perhaps that's part of the problem.

Have any you found these better than base, ever?

The attached screenshots are:

./llama-server -hf mradermacher/Qwen3.5-27B-heretic-GGUF:Q4_K_S --temp 1.0 --top-p 0.8 --top-k 20 --min-p 0.00 --fit on --alias default --jinja --flash-attn on --ctx-size 262144 --ctx-checkpoints 256 --cache-ram -1 --cache-type-k q4_0 --cache-type-v q4_0 --threads 8 --threads-batch 16 --no-mmap

./llama-server -hf mradermacher/Qwen3.5-40B-Claude-4.6-Opus-Deckard-Heretic-Uncensored-Thinking-i1-GGUF:i1-Q3_K_S --temp 1.0 --top-p 0.8 --top-k 20 --min-p 0.00 --fit on --alias default --jinja --flash-attn on --ctx-size 131072 --ctx-checkpoints 256 --cache-ram -1 --cache-type-k q4_0 --cache-type-v q4_0 --threads 8 --threads-batch 16 --no-mmap

Open Reddit thread

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2842987

Prompt injection is essentially a way for malicious people to hijack the LLM's usual behavior. That may include fabricated evidence put into the model or the external context (eg a completely white-out text not seen by humans). The authors were able to get all the latest LLMs to recommend thalidomide in a hypothetical encounter with a pregnant woman, 80 to 100 percent of the time. That's a major reason I won't let an agentic AI touch private information or use an AI browser.

Open Reddit thread
View more discussions →

AI tools related to Claude 4.6 Opus vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet

These tools are closely connected to one or both models in this comparison and can help you evaluate real-world fit.

AI Chatbot

LongShot AI

LongShot AI is an AI-powered content creation platform built to help users plan, generate, and optimize articles for search engines like Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. It provides features such as real-time content generation, fact-checking, semantic SEO, and custom AI tools to produce high-quality, SEO-optimized content. LongShot AI balances creativity with optimization to help users create content that engages audiences and improves search rankings.

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AI Chatbot

Claudeai.ai

Claudeai.ai is a platform powered by Anthropic's Claude 2 language model. It provides global access to Claude 2's features, including support for processing various text files, a 100K token context limit, and the ability to interact with up to 5 files at once. While not affiliated with Anthropic, Claudeai.ai uses the Claude 2 API to offer a user experience similar to the official website, accessible without regional restrictions.

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AI Writing Assistants

Sudowrite

Sudowrite is an AI writing assistant tailored for fiction authors, novelists, and screenwriters. It helps users overcome writer's block, brainstorm concepts, generate prose, expand scenes, refine sentences, and receive feedback on drafts. By utilizing various large language models, it supports the entire writing process—from initial outlining to final editing—to make writing more efficient, enjoyable, and collaborative.

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AI Agent

Engine

Engine is a suite of LLM-powered no-code tools that enables the creation of hosted API endpoints, HTML pages, and images using natural language. Additionally, it functions as an AI software engineer for teams, integrating with platforms like Jira, Trello, and Linear to convert tickets into pull requests, helping to automate development tasks and clear backlogs.

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Which model should you choose?

Use the summary below to decide which model better fits your workflow, budget, and feature requirements.

Best fit for

Claude 4.6 Opus

Claude 4.6 Opus is a stronger fit for long-context workloads, reasoning-heavy tasks, tool-augmented workflows.

Best fit for

Claude 4.5 Sonnet

Claude 4.5 Sonnet is a stronger fit for reasoning-heavy tasks, tool-augmented workflows, multimodal applications.

Verdict

Choose Claude 4.6 Opus if you prioritize long-context workloads, reasoning-heavy tasks, tool-augmented workflows. Choose Claude 4.5 Sonnet if your workflow depends more on reasoning-heavy tasks, tool-augmented workflows, multimodal applications.

FAQ

Common questions about Claude 4.6 Opus vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet

What is the main difference between Claude 4.6 Opus and Claude 4.5 Sonnet?

Claude 4.6 Opus leans toward long-context workloads, reasoning-heavy tasks, tool-augmented workflows, while Claude 4.5 Sonnet is better suited to reasoning-heavy tasks, tool-augmented workflows, multimodal applications.

Which model is cheaper: Claude 4.6 Opus or Claude 4.5 Sonnet?

Claude 4.5 Sonnet starts lower on input pricing at $3.0000 per 1M input tokens, compared with $5.0000 for Claude 4.6 Opus.

Which model has the larger context window: Claude 4.6 Opus or Claude 4.5 Sonnet?

Claude 4.6 Opus is listed with a context window of 1M, while Claude 4.5 Sonnet is listed with 200,000.

How should I evaluate Claude 4.6 Opus vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet for my use case?

This comparison currently includes 13 shared benchmark rows, helping you compare practical performance across overlapping evaluations.