Claude 3 Opus vs o1

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across knowledge, coding, math, and reasoning.

Claude 3 Opus has the cleaner overall profile here, landing at 53 versus 51. It is a real lead, but still close enough that category-level strengths matter more than the headline number.

o1 is the reasoning model in the pair, while Claude 3 Opus is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use.

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude 3 Opus if you want the stronger benchmark profile. o1 only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority or you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.

Knowledge

o1

Claude 3 Opus

50.2

o1

83.8

61
MMLU
91.8
61
GPQA
75.7
59
SuperGPQA
-
57
OpenBookQA
-
62
MMLU-Pro
-
1
HLE
-

Coding

o1

Claude 3 Opus

27.7

o1

41

53
HumanEval
-
10
SWE-bench Verified
41
20
LiveCodeBench
-

Mathematics

o1

Claude 3 Opus

61.6

o1

74.3

61
AIME 2023
-
63
AIME 2024
74.3
62
AIME 2025
-
57
HMMT Feb 2023
-
59
HMMT Feb 2024
-
58
HMMT Feb 2025
-
60
BRUMO 2025
-
73
MATH-500
-

Reasoning

Claude 3 Opus
59
SimpleQA
-
57
MuSR
-
74
BBH
-

Instruction Following

o1

Claude 3 Opus

77

o1

92.2

77
IFEval
92.2

Multilingual

Claude 3 Opus
73
MGSM
-

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Claude 3 Opus or o1?

Claude 3 Opus is ahead overall, 53 to 51. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Verified, where the scores are 10 and 41.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude 3 Opus or o1?

o1 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 83.8 versus 50.2. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Claude 3 Opus or o1?

o1 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 41 versus 27.7. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Claude 3 Opus or o1?

o1 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 74.3 versus 61.6. Inside this category, AIME 2024 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Claude 3 Opus or o1?

o1 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 92.2 versus 77. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 9, 2026

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