Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Sonnet 5.5
Claude Opus 5 Verdict
- Claude Opus 5 (high) and Claude Sonnet 5.5 (max) are level on quality (68.3 vs 67.6).
- Claude Opus 5 (high) is stronger in composite, human preference, knowledge, multimodal.
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 (max) is stronger in agents & tools, coding, long context, maths, reasoning.
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 (max) is 2.5× cheaper ($4.00 vs $10.00 per 1M blended).
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 (max) streams 2.6× faster (141 vs 54 tokens per second).
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (high) | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (max) |
|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 68.3 | 67.6 |
| Agents & tools score | 65.1 | 69.5 |
| Coding score | 69.2 | 69.8 |
| Composite score | 84.1 | 72.6 |
| Human preference score | 68.9 | – |
| Knowledge score | 76.9 | 65.4 |
| Long context score | 64.7 | 66.6 |
| Maths score | 71.1 | 72.9 |
| Multimodal score | 66.4 | – |
| Reasoning score | 72.7 | 81.1 |
| Blended price $/M | $10.00 | $4.00 |
| Output speed | 54 tok/s | 141 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 20.4 s | 487.1 s |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| GPQA Diamond | – | 95.6% |
| FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 | – | 88.8% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | – | 80.5% |
| OTIS Mock AIME | – | 100.0% |
| SimpleQA Verified | – | 46.5% |
| Terminal-Bench | 50.3% | 61.8% |
| OSWorld-Verified 2.0 | 29.0% | – |
| SciCode | 54.3% | 61.0% |
| WeirdML | 91.6% | – |
| APEX-Agents | – | 75.5% |
| ProofBench | – | 100.0% |
| LMArena Text | 1490 | – |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1515 | – |
| LMArena Coding | 1534 | – |
| LMArena WebDev | 1657 | – |
| LMArena Vision | 1319 | – |
| LMArena Agent | 8 | 12 |
| LiveBench | – | 75.7% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | – | 91.6% |
| LiveBench Coding | – | 91.4% |
| LiveBench Agentic Coding | – | 56.3% |
| LiveBench Mathematics | – | 96.1% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | – | 59.5% |
| LiveBench Language | – | 78.0% |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | – | 56.8% |
| AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2 | 48.1 | 56 |
| AA-LCR | 79.0% | 82.7% |
| MMMU-Pro | 82.4% | – |
| AA-Omniscience | 33.7 | 32.3 |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | 93.7% | – |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | 52.8% | 55.0% |
| SciCode (AA) | 55.4% | 61.0% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 97.5% | – |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 88.3% | – |
| ARC-AGI-3 | 30.2% | – |
| CritPt | 28.3% | 31.4% |
| GDPval-AA v2.1 | 54.7% | 67.0% |
| τ³-Banking (AA) | 44.7% | – |
| Analyst Agent (AA) | – | 57.5% |
| LMArena Maths | 1521 | – |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1471 | – |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1497 | – |
| LMArena Multi-turn | 1484 | – |
| LMArena Longer Queries | 1504 | – |
| LMArena Document | 1490 | – |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | – | 65.0% |
| DeepSWE v1.1 | 72.8% | – |
| LMCA | 63.7% | – |
| DTBench | 97.9% | – |
| CursorBench | 44.7% | 55.5% |
| ALE-Bench | 2164.6 | – |
| FrontierSWE | – | 61.9% |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (AA) | 46.0% | 63.6% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (AA) | 87.6% | – |
| AutomationBench | 53.6% | 71.8% |
| GDP.pdf | 19.6% | 25.8% |
| MLCR | 59.4% | 75.0% |
| Harvey LAB | – | 2.8% |
| AA-Omniscience: accuracy | 58.9% | 54.0% |
| AA-Omniscience: non-hallucination | 38.8% | 53.0% |
| AA-Briefcase v1.1 | 1561 | 1823 |
Data as of 2026-10-11. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Sonnet 5.5: questions
- Is Claude Opus 5 better than Claude Sonnet 5.5?
- Claude Opus 5 (high) and Claude Sonnet 5.5 (max) are level on quality (68.3 vs 67.6). The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Claude Opus 5 (high) is ahead overall as of 2026-10-11, but check the category scores for your use.
- Is Claude Opus 5 better than Claude Sonnet 5.5 for coding?
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 scores higher in coding (70 vs 69 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Is Claude Opus 5 better than Claude Sonnet 5.5 for agentic tasks?
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 scores higher in agentic tasks (70 vs 65 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 5 or Claude Sonnet 5.5?
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 is cheaper: $4.00 against $10.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token.
- Which is faster, Claude Opus 5 or Claude Sonnet 5.5?
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 streams faster: 141 against 54 output tokens per second.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Both accept 1M tokens of context.