Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Sonnet 5
Full profiles: Claude Opus 5 (Anthropic) and Claude Sonnet 5 (Anthropic): every benchmark, price and rank.
Updated · Data from 11 sources
As of 26 Oct 2026, Claude Opus 5 (max) leads on quality (68.8 vs 60.1 on the BenchLeader Index), but Claude Sonnet 5 (high) costs 2.5× less, so it is the better buy unless you need the extra quality. Claude Opus 5 leads in every category we measure both in.
Claude Opus 5 benchmarks max Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 benchmarks high 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 61 category score; Arena WebDev 1691 vs 1541 | High |
| Agents & tool use | Claude Opus 5 | 64 vs 57 category score; Arena Agent 8.2 vs 3.8 | High |
| Maths | Claude Opus 5 | 71 vs 65 category score; Arena Maths 1517 vs 1473 | Medium |
| Reasoning | Claude Opus 5 | 74 vs 66 category score; CritPt 29.1% vs 15.1% | High |
| Knowledge | Claude Opus 5 | 72 vs 60 category score; AA-Omniscience 37.1 vs -3.7 | High |
| Long documents | Claude Opus 5 | 65 vs 63 category score; AA-LCR 79.3% vs 76.7% | Medium |
| Images and other media | Claude Opus 5 | 68 vs 61 category score | Medium |
| Chat quality (human preference) | Claude Opus 5 | 69 vs 65 on Arena votes | Medium |
| Lowest cost | Claude Sonnet 5 | $4.00 vs $10.00 per 1M blended; agentic coding session $0.160 vs $0.400 | – |
| Fastest first answer | Claude Sonnet 5 | 14.1 s (Claude Sonnet 5 (high)) vs 68.7 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 60.1.
- Claude Opus 5 (max) is stronger in agents & tools, coding, composite, human preference, knowledge, long context, maths, multimodal, reasoning.
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high) is 2.5× cheaper ($4.00 vs $10.00 per 1M blended).
At a glance
| Spec | Claude Opus 5 | Claude Sonnet 5 |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Released | 24 Jul 2026 | 30 Jun 2026 |
| Context window (tokens) | 1,000,000 | 1,000,000 |
| Compared at | Claude Opus 5 (max) | Claude Sonnet 5 (high) |
| Open weights | No | No |
| Price in / out / cached input per 1M | $5.00 / $25.00 / $0.500 | $2.00 / $10.00 / $0.200 |
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 5 (max) | Claude Sonnet 5 (high) | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reasoning | 74.1 | 65.7 | Claude Opus 5 |
| Coding | 70.2 | 60.7 | Claude Opus 5 |
| Agents & tools | 64.3 | 56.7 | Claude Opus 5 |
| Maths | 70.6 | 65.4 | Claude Opus 5 |
| Knowledge | 71.6 | 59.8 | Claude Opus 5 |
| Human preference | 68.5 | 64.9 | Claude Opus 5 |
| Multimodal | 67.9 | 61.0 | Claude Opus 5 |
| Long context | 64.7 | 63.3 | Claude Opus 5 |
| Composite | 86.3 | 64.9 | Claude Opus 5 |
Where sources disagree
Across the 25 benchmarks both have, Claude Opus 5 leads 25, Claude Sonnet 5 leads 0. Every overall index that rates both puts Claude Opus 5 ahead.
| Overall index | Claude Opus 5 (max) | Claude Sonnet 5 (high) | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 68.8 | 60.1 | Claude Opus 5 |
| AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2 | 50.8 | 31.7 | Claude Opus 5 |
| Arena Text | 1491 | 1462 | Claude Opus 5 |
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 5 (max) | Claude Sonnet 5 (high) |
|---|---|---|
| Blended price per 1M tokens | $10.00 | $4.00 |
| Input / output per 1M | $5.00 / $25.00 | $2.00 / $10.00 |
| Cached input per 1M | $0.500 | $0.200 |
| Price per task: chat reply | $0.0095 | $0.0038 |
| Price per task: summarize a 30-page report | $0.075 | $0.030 |
| Price per task: code edit | $0.068 | $0.027 |
| Price per task: agentic coding session | $0.400 | $0.160 |
| Price per task: structured extraction | $0.015 | $0.0060 |
| Cost to run a full benchmark suite | $5.86 | $1.79 |
| Output speed | 51 tok/s | 65 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 68.7 s | 14.1 s |
| Time to a complete answer | 78.4 s | 21.8 s |
Per token is not per task: on Artificial Analysis' full suite Claude Opus 5 (max) cost $5.86 and Claude Sonnet 5 (high) $1.79, because Claude Opus 5 (max) used about 1.3× as many tokens for the same work, which a per-token price hides.
Each model is compared at its best-ranked reasoning-effort setting. Claude Opus 5 (max) scores 68.8 and takes 69 s to its first answer token; Claude Opus 5 (high) scores 67.9 in 17 s, Claude Opus 5 (xhigh) scores 67.4 in 31 s. Claude Sonnet 5 (high) scores 60.1 and takes 14 s to its first answer token; Claude Sonnet 5 (xhigh) scores 59.0 in 21 s, Claude Sonnet 5 (max) scores 58.4 in 203 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
123 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 5 (max) | Claude Sonnet 5 (high) |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | BenchLeader | 68.8 | 60.1 |
| Agents & tools score | BenchLeader | 64.3 | 56.7 |
| Coding score | BenchLeader | 70.2 | 60.7 |
| Composite score | BenchLeader | 86.3 | 64.9 |
| Human preference score | BenchLeader | 68.5 | 64.9 |
| Knowledge score | BenchLeader | 71.6 | 59.8 |
| Long context score | BenchLeader | 64.7 | 63.3 |
| Maths score | BenchLeader | 70.6 | 65.4 |
| Multimodal score | BenchLeader | 67.9 | 61.0 |
| Reasoning score | BenchLeader | 74.1 | 65.7 |
| Blended price $/M | BenchLeader | $10.00 | $4.00 |
| Output speed | BenchLeader | 51 tok/s | 65 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | BenchLeader | 68.7 s | 14.1 s |
| Context window | BenchLeader | 1,000,000 tokens | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Reasoning | |||
| GPQA Diamond | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 93.9% | 90.5%† |
| SimpleBench | SimpleBench | 80.6%† | 60.6%† |
| Arena Hard Prompts | Arena (LMArena) | 1515 | 1490 |
| LiveBench 1.0 Reasoning | LiveBench | 91.2% | 88.7%† |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 93.2% | 91.1%† |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 54.9% | 35.7% |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Vals AI | 93.4%† | 88.9%† |
| ARC-AGI-1 | ARC Prize | 97.5% | – |
| ARC-AGI-2 | ARC Prize | 90.4% | – |
| ARC-AGI-3 | ARC Prize | 30.2%† | – |
| CritPt | Artificial Analysis | 29.1% | 15.1% |
| MysteryMechanism | Vals AI | 37.4%† | – |
| Chess Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 43.0% | 34.0%† |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 59.0% | 16.0%† |
| LMCA | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 63.3% | 50.0% |
| DTBench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 97.6% | 84.5% |
| ForecastBench | ForecastBench | 66.5% | 63.4%† |
| BTF-3 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 12.0%† | 14.2%† |
| Coding | |||
| SciCode | SciCode | 56.4% | 54.3% |
| WeirdML | WeirdML | 91.8% | 68.8% |
| FrontierCode | Cognition | 53.4% | 42.7%† |
| GSO-Bench | GSO-Bench | – | 37.3%† |
| Arena Coding | Arena (LMArena) | 1528 | 1520 |
| Arena WebDev | Arena (LMArena) | 1691 | 1541 |
| LiveBench 1.0 Coding | LiveBench | 81.5% | 80.7%† |
Show all 123 benchmarks
| Metric | Publisher | Claude Opus 5 (max) | Claude Sonnet 5 (high) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | |||
| LiveCodeBench | Vals AI | 89.0%† | 82.4%† |
| IOI | Vals AI | 84.3%† | 45.0%† |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | Vals AI | 97.0%† | 79.6%† |
| Code Migration | Vals AI | 57.5%† | 44.4%† |
| ProgramBench | Vals AI | 3.0%† | 0.0%† |
| Vibe Code Bench 1-100 | Vals AI | 28.5%† | 13.8%† |
| Vibe Code Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | 88.4%† | 81.3%† |
| SWE Atlas: Codebase QnA | Scale AI SEAL | 63.2%† | – |
| SWE Atlas: Test Writing | Scale AI SEAL | 62.2%† | – |
| Surface Evolver Bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 60.0%† |
| DeepSWE v1.1 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 73.7% | 48.2% |
| CursorBench | Cursor | 46.6% | 30.8% |
| ALE-Bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 2164.6† | 1463.1 |
| FrontierSWE | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 52.0% | – |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 49.0% | 5.0% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 89.1% | 80.5%† |
| Startrise Frontend | Startrise | 82.3%† | 66.6%† |
| Agents & tools | |||
| Terminal-Bench | Terminal-Bench | 51.8% | 12.4%† |
| OSWorld-Verified 2.0 | OSWorld | 31.4% | – |
| APEX-Agents | Mercor | 65.8% | 54.5%† |
| Arena Agent | Arena (LMArena) | 8.2 | 3.8 |
| LiveBench Agentic Coding | LiveBench | 65.2% | 59.4%† |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Vals AI | 84.6%† | 74.5%† |
| MCP Atlas | Scale AI SEAL | 85.8%† | – |
| HiL-Bench | Scale AI SEAL | 57.0%† | – |
| τ³-bench Banking | τ²-bench | 48.7% | – |
| τ³-Banking (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 42.1% | 37.3%† |
| Analyst Agent (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 53.8% | 46.3%† |
| CUA-bench | Vals AI | 9.0% | – |
| CyberBench | Vals AI | 65.4%† | 61.9%† |
| Finance Agent v2 | Vals AI | 58.6%† | 53.9%† |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1 | Vals AI | 6.7%† | 5.0%† |
| Legal Research Bench | Vals AI | 55.3%† | 41.8%† |
| SkillsBench | Vals AI | 60.4%† | 46.5%† |
| SREBench | Vals AI | 12.2%† | 0.4%† |
| Tax Agent Bench | Vals AI | 45.5%† | 29.4%† |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (Vals) | Vals AI | 53.5%† | 10.6%† |
| Terminal-Bench Science | Vals AI | 27.1%† | 5.7%† |
| Time Horizon Index: KSP | Vals AI | 18.8%† | – |
| Arena Search | Arena (LMArena) | 1214† | – |
| BALROG | BALROG | 63.4% | – |
| PostTrainBench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 35.0%† | – |
| GBAEval | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 79.6%† | 65.3%† |
| Vending-Bench 2 | Andon Labs | 11181.9† | 6377.7† |
| AutomationBench | Artificial Analysis | 56.6% | 32.1% |
| GDP.pdf (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 21.6% | 9.4% |
| EnterpriseOps-Gym | Artificial Analysis | 47.5% | 43.9%† |
| AA-Briefcase v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | 1657 | 1357† |
| 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 | 85.6% | 65.6%† |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 73.2% | 29.3%† |
| OTIS Mock AIME | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 98.9% | 94.7%† |
| ProofBench | Vals AI | 99.0% | 77.0%† |
| LiveBench Mathematics | LiveBench | 95.7% | 92.9%† |
| Arena Maths | Arena (LMArena) | 1517 | 1473 |
| Knowledge | |||
| SimpleQA Verified | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 59.9% | 32.9%† |
| LiveBench 1.0 Data Analysis | LiveBench | 74.5% | 71.7%† |
| AA-Omniscience | Artificial Analysis | 37.1 | -3.7 |
| MMLU-Pro | Vals AI | 91.6%† | 87.5%† |
| LegalBench | Vals AI | 87.0%† | 83.9%† |
| CorpFin | Vals AI | 73.2%† | 67.0%† |
| TaxEval | Vals AI | 75.1%† | 75.6%† |
| BioMysteryBench | Vals AI | 79.3%† | – |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark | Vals AI | 73.6%† | 66.3%† |
| MedCode | Vals AI | 63.6%† | 47.5%† |
| MedScribe | Vals AI | 91.0%† | 76.0%† |
| Public Benefits Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | 76.9%† | 66.0%† |
| DrugDiscoveryBench | Scale AI SEAL | 53.7% | 50.0%† |
| EBR-bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 45.7% | – |
| GDP.pdf | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 24.0% | – |
| AA-Omniscience: accuracy | Artificial Analysis | 60.9% | 37.4% |
| AA-Omniscience: non-hallucination | Artificial Analysis | 39.2% | 34.3% |
| Instruction following | |||
| LiveBench Language | LiveBench | 88.7% | 75.0%† |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | LiveBench | 63.8% | 63.9%† |
| Arena Instruction Following | Arena (LMArena) | 1495 | 1466 |
| Human preference | |||
| Arena Text | Arena (LMArena) | 1491 | 1462 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | EQ-Bench | 1360† | 1225† |
| Arena Creative Writing | Arena (LMArena) | 1474 | 1435 |
| Arena Multi-turn | Arena (LMArena) | 1487 | 1473 |
| Arena Longer Queries | Arena (LMArena) | 1503 | 1481 |
| Multimodal | |||
| Arena Vision | Arena (LMArena) | 1320† | 1273 |
| MMMU-Pro | Artificial Analysis | 84.7% | 77.3%† |
| MMMU-Pro (Vals) | Vals AI | 89.9%† | 83.0%† |
| MortgageTax | Vals AI | 72.1%† | 70.0%† |
| SAGE | Vals AI | 49.4%† | 48.9%† |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 30.4%† | 24.9%† |
| Long context | |||
| AA-LCR | Artificial Analysis | 79.3% | 76.7% |
| Arena Document | Arena (LMArena) | 1490† | 1476 |
| MLCR | Artificial Analysis | 11.1% | 4.4% |
| Composite | |||
| Epoch Capabilities Index | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 163.9† | 156.9† |
| LiveBench 1.0 | LiveBench | 80.1% | 76.0%† |
| AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2 | Artificial Analysis | 50.8 | 31.7 |
| Vals RSI Index | Vals AI | 33.0% | – |
| Vals Science Index | Vals AI | 47.9%† | – |
| Vals Multimodal Index | Vals AI | 73.9%† | 68.8%† |
| Safety & honesty | |||
| FORTRESS | Scale AI SEAL | 16.8%† | – |
Data as of 2026-10-26. 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 Sonnet 5 (high): 1 new result (MLCR).
- Claude Opus 5 (max): 1 new result (ForecastBench); 1 score revision.
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high): 1 score revision.
- Claude Opus 5 (max): BenchLeader Index 68.3 → 68.9.
- Claude Opus 5 (max): 4 new results (GDPval-AA v2.1, AA-Omniscience: accuracy, AA-Omniscience: non-hallucination…).
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high): 2 new results (AutomationBench, GDP.pdf (AA)).
- Claude Opus 5 (max): 1 score revision.
- Claude Opus 5 (max): 2 score revisions.
Related comparisons
- Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Claude Opus 5 vs Gemini 4 Argon
- Claude Opus 5 vs Muse Wonder Full
- Claude Sonnet 5 vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Claude Sonnet 5 vs Gemini 4 Argon
- Claude Sonnet 5 vs Muse Wonder Full
- Claude Sonnet 5 vs Claude Fable 5.1
- Claude Fable 5 vs Claude Sonnet 5
Rankings: Best LLM overall · Best LLM for coding · Best LLM for agents · Best cheap LLMs
Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Sonnet 5: questions
- Is Claude Opus 5 better than Claude Sonnet 5?
- Claude Opus 5 (max) leads on quality: 68.8 vs 60.1. The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Claude Opus 5 (max) is ahead overall as of 2026-10-26, but check the category scores for your use.
- Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 5 or Claude Sonnet 5, and will that change?
- Claude Sonnet 5 is cheaper today: $4.00 against $10.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token. No price change has been announced for either.
- Is Claude Opus 5 better than Claude Sonnet 5 for coding?
- Claude Opus 5 scores higher in coding (70 vs 61 on the category index, where 50 is average). On Arena WebDev, the top shared coding benchmark, it is 1691 for Claude Opus 5 against 1541 for Claude Sonnet 5.
- Is Claude Opus 5 better than Claude Sonnet 5 for agents and tool use?
- Claude Opus 5 scores higher in agentic tasks (64 vs 57 on the category index, where 50 is average). On Arena Agent, the top shared agents & tools benchmark, it is 8.2 for Claude Opus 5 against 3.8 for Claude Sonnet 5.
- Which is better for long documents?
- Claude Opus 5 scores higher on long-context benchmarks (65 vs 63). Both accept 1,000,000 tokens of context.
- Which has lower latency?
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high) answers first: 14.1 s against 68.7 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 5 or Claude Sonnet 5?
- Claude Sonnet 5 streams faster: 65 against 51 output tokens per second.
- Do independent benchmarks agree on Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Sonnet 5?
- Across the 25 benchmarks both have, Claude Opus 5 leads 25, Claude Sonnet 5 leads 0. Every overall index that rates both puts Claude Opus 5 ahead.
- When was Claude Opus 5 released?
- Claude Opus 5 was released on 24 Jul 2026.