Seed 1.6 vs Claude 3 Opus

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

Seed 1.6 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 65 to 51. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Seed 1.6's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 42.4 against 19. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SWE-bench Verified, 46 to 10.

Seed 1.6 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. Seed 1.6 gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 200K for Claude 3 Opus.

Quick Verdict

Pick Seed 1.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude 3 Opus only becomes the better choice if you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Agentic

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

62.3

Claude 3 Opus

48.1

63
Terminal-Bench 2.0
44
67
BrowseComp
56
58
OSWorld-Verified
47

Coding

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

42.4

Claude 3 Opus

19

64
HumanEval
53
46
SWE-bench Verified
10
38
LiveCodeBench
20
46
SWE-bench Pro
20

Multimodal & Grounded

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

79.6

Claude 3 Opus

70.3

80
MMMU-Pro
73
79
OfficeQA Pro
67

Reasoning

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

74.5

Claude 3 Opus

61.6

69
SimpleQA
59
69
MuSR
57
86
BBH
74
77
LongBench v2
62
78
MRCRv2
63

Knowledge

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

56.4

Claude 3 Opus

45

73
MMLU
61
72
GPQA
61
70
SuperGPQA
59
68
OpenBookQA
57
75
MMLU-Pro
62
11
HLE
1
68
FrontierScience
56

Instruction Following

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

87

Claude 3 Opus

77

87
IFEval
77

Multilingual

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

83.4

Claude 3 Opus

69.8

88
MGSM
73
81
MMLU-ProX
68

Mathematics

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

75.9

Claude 3 Opus

65.9

72
AIME 2023
61
74
AIME 2024
63
73
AIME 2025
62
68
HMMT Feb 2023
57
70
HMMT Feb 2024
59
69
HMMT Feb 2025
58
71
BRUMO 2025
60
82
MATH-500
73

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Seed 1.6 or Claude 3 Opus?

Seed 1.6 is ahead overall, 65 to 51. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Verified, where the scores are 46 and 10.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Seed 1.6 or Claude 3 Opus?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 56.4 versus 45. Inside this category, MMLU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Seed 1.6 or Claude 3 Opus?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 42.4 versus 19. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Seed 1.6 or Claude 3 Opus?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 75.9 versus 65.9. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Seed 1.6 or Claude 3 Opus?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 74.5 versus 61.6. Inside this category, LongBench v2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Seed 1.6 or Claude 3 Opus?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 62.3 versus 48.1. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Seed 1.6 or Claude 3 Opus?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.6 versus 70.3. Inside this category, OfficeQA Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Seed 1.6 or Claude 3 Opus?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 87 versus 77. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Seed 1.6 or Claude 3 Opus?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 83.4 versus 69.8. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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