Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Opus 4.5
Anthropic vs Anthropic · Prices checked November 11, 2026
On blended cost the two are level at $11.00 per million tokens; the decision has to rest on capability, context or latency.
Pricing and capacity
RatesUSD per million tokens. Prices checked November 11, 2026.
| Metric | Claude Opus 4.6 | Claude Opus 4.5 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input / 1M tokens | $5.00 | $5.00 | level |
| Output / 1M tokens | $25.00 | $25.00 | level |
| Blended · 70/30calculated | $11.00 | $11.00 | level |
| Blended · 50/50calculated | $15.00 | $15.00 | level |
| Blended · 80/20calculated | $9.00 | $9.00 | level |
| Blended · 20/80calculated | $21.00 | $21.00 | level |
| Job cost · 100K + 10Kcalculated | $0.7500 | $0.7500 | level |
| Job cost · 1M + 100Kcalculated | $7.50 | $7.50 | level |
| Context window | 1,000,000 | 200,000 | 5.0× |
Input and output rates are as published by each provider. Blended and job-cost rows are calculated comparison metrics, not published prices — how they are derived.
Of the 6 shared benchmarks, Claude Opus 4.6 takes 5. The widest gap is on LMArena Elo, where Claude Opus 4.6 leads by 27 points. On context, Claude Opus 4.6 is the larger at 1,000,000 tokens versus 200,000. Claude Opus 4.6 was released Nov 2025; Claude Opus 4.5 Sep 2025.
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Claude Opus 4.5 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU | 88% | 87% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| GPQA Diamond | 91.31% | 86.95% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| MATH | 92% | 88% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| HumanEval | 95% | 93% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 80.84% | 80.9% | Claude Opus 4.5 |
| LMArena Elo | 1497 Elo | 1470 Elo | Claude Opus 4.6 |
Only suites both models report are listed, so a missing score is never shown as a loss. Figures are provider-published or from public leaderboards and are not independently re-run.
What each model is for
Claude Opus 4.6
Anthropic · Previous
The flagship of the Claude 4 generation. 1M-token context is GA, and Opus 4.6 leads on agentic coding, long-horizon reasoning and tool-use reliability.
- Agentic coding (Claude Code)
- 1M-token context, GA
- Tool use & function calling
- Multi-step reasoning
Claude Opus 4.5
Anthropic · Previous
Direct predecessor to Opus 4.6. Strong choice when you need Claude 4 behaviour without changing existing prompts and evals tuned to the 4.5 generation.
- 1M-token context
- Stable for production pipelines
- Strong agentic coding
- Tool use & function calling
Frequently asked questions
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.6 or Claude Opus 4.5?
On blended cost the two are level at $11.00 per million tokens; the decision has to rest on capability, context or latency. Blended cost weights input at 70% and output at 30%; price your own token split for an exact answer, since the cheaper model on a blended basis is not always cheaper for your workload.
Which performs better, Claude Opus 4.6 or Claude Opus 4.5?
Of the 6 shared benchmarks, Claude Opus 4.6 takes 5. The widest gap is on LMArena Elo, where Claude Opus 4.6 leads by 27 points. These are the figures each provider or public leaderboard publishes, not results we re-run, and a benchmark average can hide the specific behaviour your workload depends on.
Which has the larger context window, Claude Opus 4.6 or Claude Opus 4.5?
On context, Claude Opus 4.6 is the larger at 1,000,000 tokens versus 200,000. The context window caps everything in a single request: prompt, retrieved documents, conversation history and the model’s own output all share it.
Can I compare Claude Opus 4.6 and Claude Opus 4.5 on my own numbers?
Yes. Open both in the side-by-side comparison tool to see every field at once, or use the token calculator to price your actual prompt and monthly request volume against each model. Both are free and need no sign-up.
Price it for your own workload
Related matchups
Terms used on this page
Prices and scores are recomputed on every deploy from the catalogue. Prices checked November 11, 2026.