Claude Opus 4.5 vs Step 3.5 Flash

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

Claude Opus 4.5 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 77 to 66. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Claude Opus 4.5's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 90.9 against 66.7. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMMU-Pro, 94 to 64.

Step 3.5 Flash gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 200K for Claude Opus 4.5.

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Opus 4.5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Step 3.5 Flash only becomes the better choice if you need the larger 256K context window.

Agentic

Claude Opus 4.5

Claude Opus 4.5

70.5

Step 3.5 Flash

60.2

71
Terminal-Bench 2.0
62
73
BrowseComp
66
68
OSWorld-Verified
54

Coding

Claude Opus 4.5

Claude Opus 4.5

60.4

Step 3.5 Flash

47.1

91
HumanEval
77
68
SWE-bench Verified
48
57
LiveCodeBench
45
62
SWE-bench Pro
49

Multimodal & Grounded

Claude Opus 4.5

Claude Opus 4.5

90.9

Step 3.5 Flash

66.7

94
MMMU-Pro
64
87
OfficeQA Pro
70

Reasoning

Claude Opus 4.5

Claude Opus 4.5

87.7

Step 3.5 Flash

78.3

95
SimpleQA
82
93
MuSR
82
87
BBH
83
82
LongBench v2
74
81
MRCRv2
73

Knowledge

Claude Opus 4.5

Claude Opus 4.5

70.9

Step 3.5 Flash

60.8

99
MMLU
84
97
GPQA
83
95
SuperGPQA
81
93
OpenBookQA
79
81
MMLU-Pro
76
20
HLE
12
84
FrontierScience
71

Instruction Following

Claude Opus 4.5

Claude Opus 4.5

90

Step 3.5 Flash

87

90
IFEval
87

Multilingual

Claude Opus 4.5

Claude Opus 4.5

86.1

Step 3.5 Flash

82.8

90
MGSM
86
84
MMLU-ProX
81

Mathematics

Claude Opus 4.5

Claude Opus 4.5

93.2

Step 3.5 Flash

84.5

99
AIME 2023
85
99
AIME 2024
87
98
AIME 2025
86
95
HMMT Feb 2023
81
97
HMMT Feb 2024
83
96
HMMT Feb 2025
82
96
BRUMO 2025
84
89
MATH-500
85

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Claude Opus 4.5 or Step 3.5 Flash?

Claude Opus 4.5 is ahead overall, 77 to 66. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMMU-Pro, where the scores are 94 and 64.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude Opus 4.5 or Step 3.5 Flash?

Claude Opus 4.5 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 70.9 versus 60.8. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Claude Opus 4.5 or Step 3.5 Flash?

Claude Opus 4.5 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 60.4 versus 47.1. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Claude Opus 4.5 or Step 3.5 Flash?

Claude Opus 4.5 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 93.2 versus 84.5. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Claude Opus 4.5 or Step 3.5 Flash?

Claude Opus 4.5 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 87.7 versus 78.3. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Claude Opus 4.5 or Step 3.5 Flash?

Claude Opus 4.5 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 70.5 versus 60.2. Inside this category, OSWorld-Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Claude Opus 4.5 or Step 3.5 Flash?

Claude Opus 4.5 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 90.9 versus 66.7. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Claude Opus 4.5 or Step 3.5 Flash?

Claude Opus 4.5 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 90 versus 87. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Claude Opus 4.5 or Step 3.5 Flash?

Claude Opus 4.5 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 86.1 versus 82.8. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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