Anthropic vs Anthropic

Claude 4.8 Opus vs Claude 4.6 Sonnet

Compare Claude 4.8 Opus and Claude 4.6 Sonnet across pricing, context window, capabilities, benchmarks, and API access to choose the better fit for reasoning-heavy tasks versus long-context workloads.

Overview Comparison

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

Claude 4.8 Opus
Claude 4.6 Sonnet

Provider

The entity that currently provides this model.

Claude 4.8 Opus Anthropic
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Anthropic

Model ID

The routed model identifier exposed by upstream providers.

Claude 4.8 Opus anthropic/claude-opus-4.8
Claude 4.6 Sonnet anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6

Input Context Window

The number of tokens supported by the input context window.

Claude 4.8 Opus $25.00 /MTok tokens
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 1M tokens

Maximum Output Tokens

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

Claude 4.8 Opus 128,000 tokens tokens
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 128,000 tokens tokens

Open Source

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

Claude 4.8 Opus No
Claude 4.6 Sonnet No

Release Date

When the model was first released.

Claude 4.8 Opus May 27, 2026
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Feb 17, 2026

Knowledge Cut-off Date

When the model's knowledge was last updated.

Claude 4.8 Opus Unknown
Claude 4.6 Sonnet February 2026

API Providers

The providers that currently expose the model through an API.

Claude 4.8 Opus
OpenRouter
Claude 4.6 Sonnet
OpenRouter

Modalities

Types of data each model can process or return.

Claude 4.8 Opus
Text Image File
Claude 4.6 Sonnet
Text Image File Code

Pricing Comparison

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

Claude 4.8 Opus Anthropic
Input price $5.00 Per 1M tokens
Output price $25.00 Per 1M tokens
Claude 4.6 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 4.8 Opus
Claude 4.6 Sonnet
1M Token Context Accepts up to 1 million tokens in a single request (beta), enabling reasoning across entire codebases, lengthy contracts, or dozens of documents at once.
Claude 4.8 Opus
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
Advanced Coding Supports the full software development lifecycle including planning, implementation, debugging, and large-scale refactors across multiple files.
Claude 4.8 Opus
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
Agentic Workflows Handles long-running, multi-step autonomous tasks with improved instruction following, tool selection, and error correction over extended sessions.
Claude 4.8 Opus
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
Computer Use Controls browsers and desktop software to navigate complex spreadsheets, fill multi-step web forms, and automate workflows that previously required human intervention.
Claude 4.8 Opus
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
File
Claude 4.8 Opus Supported
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
Image
Claude 4.8 Opus Supported
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
MCP Integration Compatible with Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, enabling connection to external data sources and services through a standardized interface.
Claude 4.8 Opus
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
Reasoning Applies multi-step reasoning to complex professional tasks including financial analysis, research synthesis, and frontend code generation.
Claude 4.8 Opus Supported
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
Safety Guardrails Includes Anthropic's safety evaluations with documented resistance to prompt injection attacks, rated as safe as or safer than other recent Claude models.
Claude 4.8 Opus
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
Structured Output
Claude 4.8 Opus Supported
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
Text
Claude 4.8 Opus Supported
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
Tool Use Supports structured tool calling, allowing the model to invoke external functions and APIs as part of a reasoning or task-completion workflow.
Claude 4.8 Opus
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
Tools
Claude 4.8 Opus Supported
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported

Benchmark Comparison

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

Benchmark Claude 4.8 Opus Claude 4.6 Sonnet
ARC-AGI-2
Novel abstract reasoning and pattern recognition
Claude 4.8 Opus N/A
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 58.3%
Finance Agent
Financial analysis and decision-making tasks
Claude 4.8 Opus N/A
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 63.3%
GPQA Diamond
PhD-level science questions (biology, physics, chemistry)
Claude 4.8 Opus N/A
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 79.9%
HLE
Questions that challenge frontier models across many domains
Claude 4.8 Opus N/A
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 13.2%
IFBench
Instruction following accuracy
Claude 4.8 Opus N/A
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 41.2%
Long Context Reasoning
Reasoning across long documents and contexts
Claude 4.8 Opus N/A
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 57.7%
MATH-500
Undergraduate and competition-level math problems
Claude 4.8 Opus N/A
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 97.8%
MCP-Atlas Tool Use
Structured tool use via Model Context Protocol
Claude 4.8 Opus N/A
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 61.3%
MMLU-Pro
Expert knowledge across 14 academic disciplines
Claude 4.8 Opus N/A
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 79.1%
MMMB
Multilingual and multimodal understanding
Claude 4.8 Opus N/A
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 76.1%
OSWorld-Verified
Autonomous computer use and desktop tasks
Claude 4.8 Opus N/A
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 72.5%
SciCode
Scientific research coding and numerical methods
Claude 4.8 Opus N/A
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 46.9%
SWE-bench Verified
Real GitHub issues requiring multi-file code fixes
Claude 4.8 Opus N/A
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 79.6%
Terminal-Bench 2.0
Agentic coding and terminal command tasks
Claude 4.8 Opus N/A
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 59.1%
TerminalBench Hard
Agentic coding and terminal command tasks
Claude 4.8 Opus N/A
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 46.2%
τ²-Bench
Agentic tool use in realistic scenarios
Claude 4.8 Opus N/A
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 79.5%
τ²-bench Retail
Agentic tool use in retail scenarios
Claude 4.8 Opus N/A
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 91.7%
τ²-bench Telecom
Agentic tool use in telecom scenarios
Claude 4.8 Opus N/A
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 97.9%
Community discussion

What Reddit discussions say about Claude 4.8 Opus vs Claude 4.6 Sonnet

Claude 4.8 Opus and Claude 4.6 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/DeepSeek, r/SillyTavernAI. The feed below mixes discussion threads surfaced for each model so you can quickly spot where community sentiment overlaps or diverges.

Claude 4.6 Sonnet r/DeepSeek 113 upvotes 40 comments April 29, 2026
Deepseek V4 pro reminds me of Claude 4.6 sonnet

Honestly, it isn't a terrible model.

I would put it on par with maybe Claude 4.6 sonnet.

For creativity, as I usually need that for writing. Its pretty excellent. Just not the feeling of a model like opus would.

I don't really use any other model except Kimi K2.6, as that's the best one so far.

For coding, it's pretty good too, though I've only done some html stuff with it.

And the fact it's in preview, just only means there's a hole lot more this model can do! Once it gets better at roleplay (still a bit generic, better than deepseek V3.2 in some way imo). It would be my daily driver most definitely.

Open Reddit thread
Claude 4.6 Sonnet r/SillyTavernAI 91 upvotes 40 comments February 17, 2026
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is out

[https://openrouter.ai/anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6](https://openrouter.ai/anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6)

Same price as Sonnet 4.5

Open Reddit thread
View more discussions →

AI tools related to Claude 4.8 Opus vs Claude 4.6 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 4.8 Opus

Claude 4.8 Opus is a stronger fit for reasoning-heavy tasks, tool-augmented workflows, multimodal applications.

Best fit for

Claude 4.6 Sonnet

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

Verdict

Choose Claude 4.8 Opus if you prioritize reasoning-heavy tasks, tool-augmented workflows, multimodal applications. Choose Claude 4.6 Sonnet if your workflow depends more on long-context workloads, reasoning-heavy tasks, tool-augmented workflows.

FAQ

Common questions about Claude 4.8 Opus vs Claude 4.6 Sonnet

What is the main difference between Claude 4.8 Opus and Claude 4.6 Sonnet?

Claude 4.8 Opus leans toward reasoning-heavy tasks, tool-augmented workflows, multimodal applications, while Claude 4.6 Sonnet is better suited to long-context workloads, reasoning-heavy tasks, tool-augmented workflows.

Which model is cheaper: Claude 4.8 Opus or Claude 4.6 Sonnet?

Claude 4.6 Sonnet starts lower on input pricing at $3.0000 per 1M input tokens, compared with $5.0000 for Claude 4.8 Opus.

Which model has the larger context window: Claude 4.8 Opus or Claude 4.6 Sonnet?

Claude 4.8 Opus is listed with a context window of $25.00 /MTok, while Claude 4.6 Sonnet is listed with 1M.

How should I evaluate Claude 4.8 Opus vs Claude 4.6 Sonnet for my use case?

This comparison currently includes 18 shared benchmark rows, helping you compare practical performance across overlapping evaluations.