Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Opus 5
Full profiles: Claude Opus 4.6 (Anthropic) and Claude Opus 5 (Anthropic): every benchmark, price and rank.
Updated · Data from 12 sources
As of 25 Oct 2026, Claude Opus 5 (max) is the better pick for most workloads: it leads on quality (68.8 vs 62.7 on the BenchLeader Index) at about the same price. Pick Claude Opus 4.6 for human preference (70 vs 69); pick Claude Opus 5 for reasoning (74 vs 66).
Claude Opus 4.6 benchmarks high Anthropic Claude Opus 5 benchmarks max AnthropicOpen in the comparison toolWhich to pick for…
The pick's numbers come first. Category scores on the BenchLeader scale (50 is the average model, 15 points one standard deviation). High confidence means a lead of half a standard deviation or more; under one point is called either.
| Use case | Pick | Why | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | Claude Opus 5 | 70 vs 63 category score; Arena WebDev 1691 vs 1546 | High |
| Maths | Claude Opus 5 | 71 vs 64 category score; Arena Maths 1517 vs 1517 | Medium |
| Reasoning | Claude Opus 5 | 74 vs 66 category score; ARC-AGI-2 90.4% vs 69.2% | High |
| Images and other media | Claude Opus 5 | 68 vs 67 category score | Medium |
| Chat quality (human preference) | Claude Opus 4.6 | 70 vs 69 on Arena votes | Medium |
| Lowest cost | Either | $10.00 vs $10.00 per 1M blended; agentic coding session $0.400 vs $0.400 | – |
| Fastest first answer | Claude Opus 4.6 | 1.2 s (Claude Opus 4.6 (high)) vs 24.1 s (Claude Opus 5 (max)) to the first answer token | – |
| High volume on a budget | Neither flagship | A smaller model is usually the better fit: Cheapest good LLMs, Fastest LLMs | – |
Key differences
- Claude Opus 5 (max) leads on quality: 68.8 vs 62.7.
- Claude Opus 4.6 (high) is stronger in human preference.
- Claude Opus 5 (max) is stronger in coding, maths, multimodal, reasoning, agents & tools, composite, knowledge, long context.
- They cost about the same ($10.00 per 1M blended).
- Claude Opus 5 (max) streams 1.5× faster (57 vs 39 tokens per second).
At a glance
| Spec | Claude Opus 4.6 | Claude Opus 5 |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Released | 5 Feb 2026 | 24 Jul 2026 |
| Context window (tokens) | 1,000,000 | 1,000,000 |
| Compared at | Claude Opus 4.6 (high) | Claude Opus 5 (max) |
| Open weights | No | No |
| Price in / out / cached input per 1M | $5.00 / $25.00 / $0.500 | $5.00 / $25.00 / $0.500 |
Category by category
Category scores on the BenchLeader scale: 50 is the average evaluated model, 15 points is one standard deviation. A gap under one point is called level.
| Category | Claude Opus 4.6 (high) | Claude Opus 5 (max) | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reasoning | 65.5 | 74.1 | Claude Opus 5 |
| Coding | 62.7 | 70.2 | Claude Opus 5 |
| Agents & tools | – | 64.3 | not comparable |
| Maths | 63.5 | 70.6 | Claude Opus 5 |
| Knowledge | – | 71.6 | not comparable |
| Human preference | 70.0 | 68.5 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| Multimodal | 66.6 | 67.9 | Claude Opus 5 |
| Long context | – | 64.7 | not comparable |
| Composite | – | 86.3 | not comparable |
Where sources disagree
Across the 19 benchmarks both have, Claude Opus 4.6 leads 6, Claude Opus 5 leads 13. Independent sources split: Claude Opus 4.6 leads on Arena Text; Claude Opus 5 leads on BenchLeader Index and AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2.
| Overall index | Claude Opus 4.6 (high) | Claude Opus 5 (max) | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 62.7 | 68.8 | Claude Opus 5 |
| AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2 | 26.4† | 50.8 | Claude Opus 5 |
| Arena Text | 1503 | 1491 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
Each publisher runs its own tasks, harnesses and effort settings, so their overall verdicts can differ; BenchLeader reconciles them on one scale. † measured at another effort setting of the same model (the publisher did not test the one compared here).
Price, speed and latency
List prices blended at three input tokens per output token. Per-task prices use the token counts on the methodology page; suite cost is what Artificial Analysis paid to run its whole Intelligence Index.
| Measure | Claude Opus 4.6 (high) | Claude Opus 5 (max) |
|---|---|---|
| Blended price per 1M tokens | $10.00 | $10.00 |
| Input / output per 1M | $5.00 / $25.00 | $5.00 / $25.00 |
| Cached input per 1M | $0.500 | $0.500 |
| Price per task: chat reply | $0.0095 | $0.0095 |
| Price per task: summarize a 30-page report | $0.075 | $0.075 |
| Price per task: code edit | $0.068 | $0.068 |
| Price per task: agentic coding session | $0.400 | $0.400 |
| Price per task: structured extraction | $0.015 | $0.015 |
| Cost to run a full benchmark suite | – | $5.86 |
| Output speed | 39 tok/s | 57 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 1.2 s | 24.1 s |
| Time to a complete answer | – | 32.9 s |
Each model is compared at its best-ranked reasoning-effort setting. Claude Opus 4.6 (high) scores 62.7 and takes 1 s to its first answer token; Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking) scores 62.5 in 1 s, Claude Opus 4.6 scores 62.5 in 1 s. Claude Opus 5 (max) scores 68.8 and takes 24 s to its first answer token; Claude Opus 5 (high) scores 67.9 in 10 s, Claude Opus 5 (xhigh) scores 67.4 in 25 s. Higher effort means more thinking before the answer: better scores, longer waits and more tokens billed. How reasoning effort changes scores and cost.
Every benchmark
166 benchmarks, grouped by category; each name links to the board and its leaders. † measured at another effort setting of the same model, shown for reference and not counted as a win.
| Metric | Publisher | Claude Opus 4.6 (high) | Claude Opus 5 (max) |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | BenchLeader | 62.7 | 68.8 |
| Coding score | BenchLeader | 62.7 | 70.2 |
| Human preference score | BenchLeader | 70.0 | 68.5 |
| Maths score | BenchLeader | 63.5 | 70.6 |
| Multimodal score | BenchLeader | 66.6 | 67.9 |
| Reasoning score | BenchLeader | 65.5 | 74.1 |
| Agents & tools score | BenchLeader | – | 64.3 |
| Composite score | BenchLeader | – | 86.3 |
| Knowledge score | BenchLeader | – | 71.6 |
| Long context score | BenchLeader | – | 64.7 |
| Blended price $/M | BenchLeader | $10.00 | $10.00 |
| Output speed | BenchLeader | 39 tok/s | 57 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | BenchLeader | 1.2 s | 24.1 s |
| Context window | BenchLeader | 1,000,000 tokens | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Reasoning | |||
| GPQA Diamond | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 90.5%† | 93.9% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | Scale AI / CAIS | 19.0%† | – |
| SimpleBench | SimpleBench | 67.6%† | 80.6%† |
| Arena Hard Prompts | Arena (LMArena) | 1530 | 1515 |
| LiveBench 2.0 Reasoning | LiveBench | – | 91.2%† |
| LiveBench 1.0 Reasoning | LiveBench | 88.7% | 91.2% |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 89.6%† | 93.2% |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 39.9%† | 54.9% |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Vals AI | 89.7%† | 93.4%† |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | Kagi LLM Benchmark | 72.4%† | – |
| ARC-AGI-1 | ARC Prize | 94.0% | 97.5% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | ARC Prize | 69.2% | 90.4% |
| ARC-AGI-3 | ARC Prize | 0.5%† | 30.2%† |
| CritPt | Artificial Analysis | 12.6%† | 29.1% |
| MysteryMechanism | Vals AI | – | 37.4%† |
| Chess Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 21.0%† | 43.0% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 15.0%† | 59.0% |
| CL-bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 20.7%† | – |
| CL-bench Life | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 17.0% | – |
| LMCA | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 55.8%† | 63.3% |
| DTBench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 91.2%† | 97.6% |
| ForecastBench | ForecastBench | 63.4%† | 66.5% |
| BTF-3 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 12.0%† |
| Coding | |||
| SWE-bench Verified (Epoch) | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 78.7%† | – |
| SciCode | SciCode | – | 56.4% |
Show all 166 benchmarks
| Metric | Publisher | Claude Opus 4.6 (high) | Claude Opus 5 (max) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | |||
| WeirdML | WeirdML | 78.0% | 91.8% |
| FrontierCode | Cognition | 26.6%† | 53.4% |
| GSO-Bench | GSO-Bench | 41.2% | – |
| Arena Coding | Arena (LMArena) | 1547 | 1528 |
| Arena WebDev | Arena (LMArena) | 1546 | 1691 |
| LiveBench 2.0 Coding | LiveBench | – | 90.8%† |
| LiveBench 1.0 Coding | LiveBench | 78.2% | 81.5% |
| LiveCodeBench | Vals AI | 84.7%† | 89.0%† |
| IOI | Vals AI | – | 84.3%† |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | Vals AI | 78.2%† | 97.0%† |
| SWE-Bench Pro | Scale AI SEAL | 51.9%† | – |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | SWE-bench | 75.6%† | – |
| SWE-bench Verified (any scaffold) | SWE-bench | 75.6%† | – |
| Code Migration | Vals AI | – | 57.5%† |
| ProgramBench | Vals AI | – | 3.0%† |
| Vibe Code Bench 1-100 | Vals AI | – | 28.5%† |
| Vibe Code Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | 57.6%† | 88.4%† |
| SWE-Bench Pro (private) | Scale AI SEAL | 51.9%† | – |
| SWE Atlas: Codebase QnA | Scale AI SEAL | 33.3%† | 63.2%† |
| SWE Atlas: Refactoring | Scale AI SEAL | 35.6%† | – |
| SWE Atlas: Test Writing | Scale AI SEAL | 36.7%† | 62.2%† |
| DeepSWE v1.1 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 73.7% |
| CursorBench | Cursor | – | 46.6% |
| ALE-Bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 996.5† | 2164.6† |
| AlgoTune | AlgoTune | 1.5 | – |
| FrontierSWE | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 52.0% |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 49.0% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 89.1% |
| Startrise Frontend | Startrise | – | 82.3%† |
| Agents & tools | |||
| Terminal-Bench | Terminal-Bench | 79.8%† | 51.8% |
| OSWorld-Verified 2.0 | OSWorld | – | 31.4% |
| Cybench | Cybench | 93.0%† | – |
| Remote Labor Index | Scale AI / CAIS | 4.2%† | – |
| APEX-Agents | Mercor | 46.3%† | 65.8% |
| Arena Agent | Arena (LMArena) | – | 8.2 |
| LiveBench Long Agentic | LiveBench | – | 62.1%† |
| LiveBench Browser | LiveBench | – | 84.0%† |
| LiveBench Agentic Coding | LiveBench | 49.0% | 65.2% |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | Artificial Analysis | 46.2%† | – |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 92.1%† | – |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Vals AI | – | 84.6%† |
| MCP Atlas | Scale AI SEAL | 76.8%† | 85.8%† |
| HiL-Bench | Scale AI SEAL | 38.3%† | 57.0%† |
| τ³-bench Banking | τ²-bench | 27.3%† | 48.7% |
| τ³-Banking (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 42.1% |
| Analyst Agent (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 53.8% |
| APEX-Agents (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 33.0%† | – |
| CUA-bench | Vals AI | – | 9.0% |
| CyberBench | Vals AI | – | 65.4%† |
| Finance Agent v2 | Vals AI | – | 58.6%† |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1 | Vals AI | – | 6.7%† |
| Legal Research Bench | Vals AI | – | 55.3%† |
| SkillsBench | Vals AI | – | 60.4%† |
| SREBench | Vals AI | – | 12.2%† |
| Tax Agent Bench | Vals AI | – | 45.5%† |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 (Vals) | Vals AI | 58.4%† | – |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (Vals) | Vals AI | – | 53.5%† |
| Terminal-Bench Science | Vals AI | – | 27.1%† |
| Time Horizon Index: KSP | Vals AI | – | 18.8%† |
| Arena Search | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1214† |
| BALROG | BALROG | – | 63.4% |
| DeepResearch Bench | DeepResearch Bench | 55.3% | – |
| PostTrainBench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 35.0%† |
| METR Time Horizons | METR | 78.9%† | – |
| GBAEval | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 44.1%† | 79.6%† |
| Vending-Bench 2 | Andon Labs | 8017.6† | 11181.9† |
| AutomationBench | Artificial Analysis | – | 56.6% |
| GDP.pdf (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 21.6% |
| EnterpriseOps-Gym | Artificial Analysis | – | 47.5% |
| AA-Briefcase v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | – | 1657 |
| Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 28.6% |
| DeepSec-Bench (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 25.9% |
| FACTS Search | – | 85.3%† | |
| Maths | |||
| FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 66.0%† | 85.6% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 26.8%† | 73.2% |
| OTIS Mock AIME | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 94.4%† | 98.9% |
| ProofBench | Vals AI | 50.0%† | 99.0% |
| LiveBench Mathematics | LiveBench | 89.3% | 95.7% |
| AIME (Vals) | Vals AI | 95.6%† | – |
| AIME 2026 | MathArena | 96.7% | – |
| HMMT February 2026 | MathArena | 96.2% | – |
| USAMO 2026 | MathArena | 47.0% | – |
| MathArena Apex | MathArena | 34.5% | – |
| Arena Maths | Arena (LMArena) | 1517 | 1517 |
| Knowledge | |||
| SimpleQA Verified | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 47.0%† | 59.9% |
| LiveBench 2.0 Data Analysis | LiveBench | – | 74.6%† |
| LiveBench Research | LiveBench | – | 88.9%† |
| LiveBench 1.0 Data Analysis | LiveBench | 69.9% | 74.5% |
| AA-Omniscience | Artificial Analysis | 13.7† | 37.1 |
| MMLU-Pro | Vals AI | 89.1%† | 91.6%† |
| LegalBench | Vals AI | 85.3%† | 87.0%† |
| CorpFin | Vals AI | 67.0%† | 73.2%† |
| TaxEval | Vals AI | 76.0%† | 75.1%† |
| MedQA | Vals AI | 95.4%† | – |
| PRBench Finance | Scale AI SEAL | 53.3%† | – |
| PRBench Legal | Scale AI SEAL | 52.3%† | – |
| MultiNRC | Scale AI SEAL | 57.1%† | – |
| BioMysteryBench | Vals AI | – | 79.3%† |
| CaseLaw v2 | Vals AI | 62.1%† | – |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark | Vals AI | – | 73.6%† |
| MedCode | Vals AI | 48.2%† | 63.6%† |
| MedScribe | Vals AI | 86.7%† | 91.0%† |
| Public Benefits Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | – | 76.9%† |
| DrugDiscoveryBench | Scale AI SEAL | 27.7%† | 53.7% |
| EBR-bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 12.7%† | 45.7% |
| GDP.pdf | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 24.0% |
| AA-Omniscience: accuracy | Artificial Analysis | 47.0%† | 60.9% |
| AA-Omniscience: non-hallucination | Artificial Analysis | 37.2%† | 39.2% |
| Global-MMLU-Lite (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 92.2%† | – |
| Instruction following | |||
| LiveBench Language | LiveBench | 83.3% | 88.7% |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | LiveBench | 63.3% | 63.8% |
| IFBench | Artificial Analysis | 53.1%† | – |
| MultiChallenge | Scale AI SEAL | 37.1%† | – |
| TutorBench | Scale AI SEAL | 53.7%† | – |
| Arena Instruction Following | Arena (LMArena) | 1511 | 1495 |
| Human preference | |||
| Arena Text | Arena (LMArena) | 1503 | 1491 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | EQ-Bench | 1213† | 1360† |
| Arena Creative Writing | Arena (LMArena) | 1500 | 1474 |
| Arena Multi-turn | Arena (LMArena) | 1516 | 1487 |
| Arena Longer Queries | Arena (LMArena) | 1521 | 1503 |
| Multimodal | |||
| Arena Vision | Arena (LMArena) | 1316 | 1320† |
| LiveBench Design | LiveBench | – | 83.0%† |
| MMMU-Pro | Artificial Analysis | 75.4%† | 84.7% |
| VISTA | Scale AI SEAL | 46.1%† | – |
| MMMU-Pro (Vals) | Vals AI | 83.9%† | 89.9%† |
| MortgageTax | Vals AI | 68.5%† | 72.1%† |
| SAGE | Vals AI | 51.6%† | 49.4%† |
| VTB | Scale AI SEAL | 27.5%† | – |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 30.4%† |
| Long context | |||
| AA-LCR | Artificial Analysis | 78.0%† | 79.3% |
| Arena Document | Arena (LMArena) | 1495 | 1490† |
| MLCR | Artificial Analysis | – | 11.1% |
| Composite | |||
| Epoch Capabilities Index | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 155.7† | 163.9† |
| LiveBench 2.0 | LiveBench | – | 82.1%† |
| LiveBench 1.0 | LiveBench | 74.5% | 80.1% |
| AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2 | Artificial Analysis | 31.9† | 50.8 |
| Vals RSI Index | Vals AI | – | 33.0% |
| Vals Science Index | Vals AI | – | 47.9%† |
| Vals Multimodal Index | Vals AI | – | 73.9%† |
| Safety & honesty | |||
| FORTRESS | Scale AI SEAL | 13.0%† | 16.8%† |
| MASK | Scale AI SEAL | 85.4%† | – |
Data as of 2026-10-25. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
What changed
- Claude Opus 5 (max): 1 new result (Vals RSI Index).
- Claude Opus 5 (max): 1 score revision.
- Claude Opus 5 (max): 1 new result (ForecastBench); 1 score revision.
- Claude Opus 4.6 (high): BenchLeader Index 60.4 → 62.9.
- Claude Opus 5 (max): BenchLeader Index 68.3 → 68.9.
- Claude Opus 4.6 (high): 1 new result (USAMO 2026).
- Claude Opus 5 (max): 4 new results (GDPval-AA v2.1, AA-Omniscience: accuracy, AA-Omniscience: non-hallucination…).
- Claude Opus 5 (max): 1 score revision.
- Claude Opus 5 (max): 2 score revisions.
- Claude Opus 5 (max): 2 new results (Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 (AA), DeepSec-Bench (AA)).
Related comparisons
- Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Claude Opus 4.6 vs Gemini 4 Argon
- Claude Opus 4.6 vs Muse Wonder Full
- Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Claude Opus 5 vs Gemini 4 Argon
- Claude Opus 5 vs Muse Wonder Full
- Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Fable 5.1
- Claude Opus 4.5 vs Claude Opus 5
Rankings: Best LLM overall · Best LLM for coding · Best LLM for agents · Best cheap LLMs
Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Opus 5: questions
- Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Claude Opus 5?
- Claude Opus 5 (max) leads on quality: 68.8 vs 62.7. The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Claude Opus 5 (max) is ahead overall as of 2026-10-25, but check the category scores for your use.
- Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.6 or Claude Opus 5, and will that change?
- They cost the same: $10.00 per million tokens blended. No price change has been announced for either.
- Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Claude Opus 5 for coding?
- Claude Opus 5 scores higher in coding (70 vs 63 on the category index, where 50 is average). On Arena WebDev, the top shared coding benchmark, it is 1546 for Claude Opus 4.6 against 1691 for Claude Opus 5.
- Which is better for long documents?
- Both accept 1,000,000 tokens of context.
- Which has lower latency?
- Claude Opus 4.6 (high) answers first: 1.2 s against 24.1 s to the first answer token, as Artificial Analysis measures it. Reasoning effort drives most of this: a higher setting thinks longer before it answers.
- Which is faster, Claude Opus 4.6 or Claude Opus 5?
- Claude Opus 5 streams faster: 57 against 39 output tokens per second.
- Do independent benchmarks agree on Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Opus 5?
- Across the 19 benchmarks both have, Claude Opus 4.6 leads 6, Claude Opus 5 leads 13. Independent sources split: Claude Opus 4.6 leads on Arena Text; Claude Opus 5 leads on BenchLeader Index and AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2.
- When was Claude Opus 5 released?
- Claude Opus 5 was released on 24 Jul 2026.