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Anthropic vs Anthropic

Claude 4.6 Opus vs Claude 4 Sonnet

Compare Claude 4.6 Opus and Claude 4 Sonnet across pricing, context window, capabilities, benchmarks, and API access to choose the better fit for long-context workloads versus reasoning-heavy tasks.

Overview ↓ Pricing ↓ Capabilities ↓ Benchmarks ↓ Community ↓ Tools ↓ Verdict ↓ FAQ ↓ Related ↓

Overview Comparison

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

Claude 4.6 Opus
Claude 4 Sonnet

Provider

The entity that currently provides this model.

Claude 4.6 Opus Anthropic
Claude 4 Sonnet Anthropic

Model ID

The routed model identifier exposed by upstream providers.

Claude 4.6 Opus anthropic/claude-opus-4.6
Claude 4 Sonnet anthropic/claude-sonnet-4

Input Context Window

The number of tokens supported by the input context window.

Claude 4.6 Opus 1M tokens
Claude 4 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 Sonnet 64,000 tokens tokens

Open Source

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

Claude 4.6 Opus No
Claude 4 Sonnet No

Release Date

When the model was first released.

Claude 4.6 Opus Feb 04, 2026
Claude 4 Sonnet May 22, 2025

Knowledge Cut-off Date

When the model's knowledge was last updated.

Claude 4.6 Opus February 2026
Claude 4 Sonnet 2025-01-31

API Providers

The providers that currently expose the model through an API.

Claude 4.6 Opus
OpenRouter
Claude 4 Sonnet
OpenRouter

Modalities

Types of data each model can process or return.

Claude 4.6 Opus
Text Image File
Claude 4 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 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 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 Sonnet —
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 Sonnet —
Agentic Tool Use Supports tool calling and multi-step workflows, enabling integration with external APIs and use as a subagent in complex AI pipelines.
Claude 4.6 Opus —
Claude 4 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 Sonnet —
Code Generation Handles code generation, debugging, refactoring, and autonomous codebase navigation, achieving a 72.7% score on the SWE-bench benchmark.
Claude 4.6 Opus —
Claude 4 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 Sonnet —
Configurable Parameters Exposes numeric configuration options such as temperature and token limits, giving developers fine-grained control over output behavior.
Claude 4.6 Opus —
Claude 4 Sonnet Supported
File
Claude 4.6 Opus Supported
Claude 4 Sonnet Supported
Hybrid Reasoning Supports both standard fast responses and an optional extended thinking mode that works through problems step by step, adapting reasoning depth to task complexity.
Claude 4.6 Opus —
Claude 4 Sonnet Supported
Image
Claude 4.6 Opus Supported
Claude 4 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 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 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 Sonnet —
Reasoning
Claude 4.6 Opus Supported
Claude 4 Sonnet Supported
Structured Output
Claude 4.6 Opus Supported
Claude 4 Sonnet —
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 Sonnet —
Text
Claude 4.6 Opus Supported
Claude 4 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 Sonnet —
Tools
Claude 4.6 Opus Supported
Claude 4 Sonnet Supported
Vision & Multimodal Input Accepts images and PDFs alongside text, allowing the model to analyze visual content and documents within the same request.
Claude 4.6 Opus —
Claude 4 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 Sonnet
AIME 2024
American math olympiad problems
Claude 4.6 Opus N/A
Claude 4 Sonnet 40.7%
ARC-AGI-2
Novel abstract reasoning and pattern recognition
Claude 4.6 Opus 68.8%
Claude 4 Sonnet N/A
BigLaw Bench
Legal reasoning and analysis tasks
Claude 4.6 Opus 90.2%
Claude 4 Sonnet N/A
GPQA Diamond
PhD-level science questions (biology, physics, chemistry)
Claude 4.6 Opus 84.0%
Claude 4 Sonnet 68.3%
HLE
Questions that challenge frontier models across many domains
Claude 4.6 Opus 18.6%
Claude 4 Sonnet 4.0%
LiveCodeBench
Real-world coding tasks from recent competitions
Claude 4.6 Opus N/A
Claude 4 Sonnet 44.9%
MATH-500
Undergraduate and competition-level math problems
Claude 4.6 Opus N/A
Claude 4 Sonnet 93.4%
MMLU-Pro
Expert knowledge across 14 academic disciplines
Claude 4.6 Opus N/A
Claude 4 Sonnet 83.7%
SciCode
Scientific research coding and numerical methods
Claude 4.6 Opus 45.7%
Claude 4 Sonnet 37.3%
SWE-bench Verified
Real GitHub issues requiring multi-file code fixes
Claude 4.6 Opus 80.8%
Claude 4 Sonnet N/A
Terminal-Bench 2.0
Agentic coding and terminal command tasks
Claude 4.6 Opus 65.4%
Claude 4 Sonnet N/A
Community discussion

What Reddit discussions say about Claude 4.6 Opus vs Claude 4 Sonnet

Claude 4.6 Opus and Claude 4 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/ClaudeAI, r/LocalLLaMA, r/singularity.

Claude 4 Sonnet r/ClaudeAI 1,892 upvotes 443 comments September 29, 2025
Introducing Claude Sonnet 4.5

https://preview.redd.it/lm1pxnzzl4sf1.png?width=2160&format=png&auto=webp&s=fe15e1db93ef31b6d39bf959715f67701ede2271

Introducing Claude Sonnet 4.5—the best coding model in the world. 

It's the strongest model for building complex agents, the best model for computer use, and it shows substantial gains on tests of reasoning and math.

We're also introducing upgrades across all Claude surfaces

**Claude Code**

* The terminal interface has a fresh new look
* The new VS Code extension brings Claude to your IDE. 
* The new checkpoints feature lets you confidently run large tasks and roll back instantly to a previous state, if needed

**Claude App**: 

* Claude can use code to analyze data, create files, and visualize insights in the files & formats you use. Now available to all paid plans in preview. 
* The Claude for Chrome extension is now available to everyone who joined the waitlist last month

**Claude Developer Platform**: 

* Run agents longer by automatically clearing stale context and using our new memory tool to store and consult more information.
* The Claude Agent SDK gives you access to the same core tools, context management systems, and permissions frameworks that power Claude Code

We're also releasing a temporary research preview called **"Imagine with Claude"**

* In this experiment, Claude generates software on the fly. No functionality is predetermined; no code is prewritten.
* Available to Max users for 5 days. [Try it out](https://claude.ai/imagine)

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is available everywhere today—on the Claude app and Claude Code, the Claude Developer Platform, natively and in Amazon Bedrock and Google Cloud's Vertex AI.

Pricing remains the same as Sonnet 4.

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

Open Reddit thread
Claude 4 Sonnet r/singularity 1,358 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 Sonnet r/ClaudeAI 1,222 upvotes 229 comments February 17, 2026
This is Claude Sonnet 4.6: our most capable Sonnet model yet.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is a full upgrade across coding, computer use, long-context reasoning, agent planning, knowledge work, and design. It also features a 1M token context window in beta.

Sonnet 4.6 has improved on benchmarks across the board. It approaches Opus-level intelligence at a price point that makes it practical for far more tasks.

It also shows a major improvement in computer use skills. Early users are seeing human-level capability in tasks like navigating a complex spreadsheet or filling out a multi-step web form.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is available now on all plans, Cowork, Claude Code, our API, and all major cloud platforms. We've also upgraded our free tier to Sonnet 4.6 by default.

Learn more: [anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-4-6](http://anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-4-6)

Open Reddit thread
View more discussions →

AI tools related to Claude 4.6 Opus vs Claude 4 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.

Free 0 visits 30 saves
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.

Free 0 visits 17 saves
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.

Free 1 visits 17 saves
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.

Free 0 visits 6 saves

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 Sonnet

Claude 4 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 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 Sonnet

What is the main difference between Claude 4.6 Opus and Claude 4 Sonnet?

Claude 4.6 Opus leans toward long-context workloads, reasoning-heavy tasks, tool-augmented workflows, while Claude 4 Sonnet is better suited to reasoning-heavy tasks, tool-augmented workflows, multimodal applications.

Which model is cheaper: Claude 4.6 Opus or Claude 4 Sonnet?

Claude 4 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 Sonnet?

Claude 4.6 Opus is listed with a context window of 1M, while Claude 4 Sonnet is listed with 200,000.

How should I evaluate Claude 4.6 Opus vs Claude 4 Sonnet for my use case?

This comparison currently includes 11 shared benchmark rows, helping you compare practical performance across overlapping evaluations.