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BenchLM

Model comparison

Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Opus 4.8

Data verified

Head-to-head evidence from 29 shared benchmark results across 7 categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.

83/100
Margin
2.0pts
winning →
85/100
2 category wins3 category wins

Verified leaderboard positions: Claude Opus 4.6 #12; Claude Opus 4.8 #3

Evidence parity. Claude Opus 4.6 and Claude Opus 4.8 share 29 comparable benchmark results. 5 of 8 categories are comparable. 19 results are unique to Claude Opus 4.6; 24 to Claude Opus 4.8.

Updated July 12, 2026
Shared results
29
Claude Opus 4.6 only
19
Claude Opus 4.8 only
24
Comparable categories
5 / 8

Pick Claude Opus 4.8 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude Opus 4.6 only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Confidence note. This is a partial-evidence comparison with 29 shared benchmark results across 7 evidence categories; 5 of 8 categories currently have scoreable aggregates for both models. Treat the verdict as directional until coverage is more balanced.

Why this result

Claude Opus 4.8 has the cleaner provisional overall profile here, landing at 85 versus 83. It is a real lead, but still close enough that category-level strengths matter more than the headline number.

Claude Opus 4.8's sharpest advantage is in mathematics, where it averages 53.9 against 36.3. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SWE-bench Pro, 53.4% to 69.2%. Claude Opus 4.6 does hit back in knowledge, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Claude Opus 4.8 is the reasoning model in the pair, while Claude Opus 4.6 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.

Category breakdown

Exact category averages are shown below. Not measured means BenchLM does not have enough sourced public coverage for that model and category.

Category scores and score margins for Claude Opus 4.6 and Claude Opus 4.8
CategoryClaude Opus 4.6ΔClaude Opus 4.8
MathClaude Opus 4.636.3Margin→ 17.6Claude Opus 4.853.9
CodingClaude Opus 4.664.1Margin→ 12.3Claude Opus 4.876.4
AgenticClaude Opus 4.673.0Margin→ 7.3Claude Opus 4.880.3
KnowledgeClaude Opus 4.669.2Margin← 6.5Claude Opus 4.862.7
MultimodalClaude Opus 4.677.3Margin← 0.3Claude Opus 4.877.0

Decisive benchmark drivers

The largest measured benchmark gaps in this matchup, with exact reported values.

More
A · Claude Opus 4.6B · Claude Opus 4.8

  1. SWE-bench Pro

    Coding
    Source ↗
    A 53.4%B 69.2%
    Winner: Claude Opus 4.8Δ 15.8
    SWE-bench Pro: Claude Opus 4.6 scored 53.4%; Claude Opus 4.8 scored 69.2%. Claude Opus 4.8 wins this benchmark.

  2. OSWorld-Verified

    Agentic
    Source ↗
    A 72.7%B 83.4%
    Winner: Claude Opus 4.8Δ 10.7
    OSWorld-Verified: Claude Opus 4.6 scored 72.7%; Claude Opus 4.8 scored 83.4%. Claude Opus 4.8 wins this benchmark.

  3. Terminal-Bench 2.0

    Agentic
    Source ↗
    A 65.4%B 74.6%
    Winner: Claude Opus 4.8Δ 9.2
    Terminal-Bench 2.0: Claude Opus 4.6 scored 65.4%; Claude Opus 4.8 scored 74.6%. Claude Opus 4.8 wins this benchmark.

  4. FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4)

    Math
    Source ↗
    A 22.900%B 31.250%
    Winner: Claude Opus 4.8Δ 8.4
    FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4): Claude Opus 4.6 scored 22.900%; Claude Opus 4.8 scored 31.250%. Claude Opus 4.8 wins this benchmark.

  5. SWE-bench Verified

    Coding
    Source ↗
    A 80.8%B 88.6%
    Winner: Claude Opus 4.8Δ 7.8
    SWE-bench Verified: Claude Opus 4.6 scored 80.8%; Claude Opus 4.8 scored 88.6%. Claude Opus 4.8 wins this benchmark.

Operational comparison

Runtime and commercial metrics are compared only when both models have a complete sourced value.

MetricClaude Opus 4.6Claude Opus 4.8Comparison
Input / output priceUSD per 1M tokensClaude Opus 4.6$5 input / $25 outputClaude Opus 4.8$5 input / $25 outputListed prices are equal.
Generation speedtokens per secondClaude Opus 4.640 tok/sClaude Opus 4.8Not availableA complete speed comparison is not available.
First-answer latencyseconds to first tokenClaude Opus 4.61.78 sClaude Opus 4.8Not availableA complete latency comparison is not available.
Context windowmaximum listed tokensClaude Opus 4.61MClaude Opus 4.81MListed context windows are equal.

Benchmark Deep Dive

AgenticClaude Opus 4.8 wins
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Claude Opus 4.8Result
Terminal-Bench 2.0Source 65.4%74.6%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
BrowseCompSource 83.7%84.3%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
OSWorld-VerifiedSource 72.7%83.4%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Tau2-TelecomSource 84.8%94.4%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claw-EvalSource 70.4%—Not comparable
DeepSearchQASource 73.7%93.1%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
CyberGymSource 66.6%—Not comparable
Gert LabsSource 61.85%72.97%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
ResearchClawBenchSource 19.9%21.1%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
JobBenchSource 36.7%—Not comparable
Finance Agent v2Source —53.9%Not comparable
GDPval-AASource —1600Not comparable
MCP AtlasSource —82.2%Not comparable
ToolathlonSource —59.9%Not comparable
AA Agentic IndexSource —47.2%Not comparable
GDPval-AASource —55.0%Not comparable
OSWorld 2.0Source —20.6%Not comparable
AA BriefcaseSource —1354Not comparable
AA AutomationBenchSource —48.5%Not comparable
AA EnterpriseOps-GymSource —44.0%Not comparable
AA Harvey LABSource —7.5%Not comparable
AA Tau3 BankingSource —27.6%Not comparable
CodingClaude Opus 4.8 wins
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Claude Opus 4.8Result
SWE-bench VerifiedSource 80.8%88.6%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
SWE-bench Verified*Source 75.6%—Not comparable
LiveCodeBench ProSource 70.7%—Not comparable
SWE-bench ProSource 53.4%69.2%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
SWE-RebenchSource 65.3%—Not comparable
React Native EvalsSource 84.1%—Not comparable
Vibe Code BenchSource 57.57%—Not comparable
Terminal-Bench HardSource 48.5%58.3%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
AA-SciCodeSource 45.7%53.5%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
FrontierCodeSource 26.9%46.5%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
SWE MultilingualSource —84.4%Not comparable
SWE MultimodalSource —38.4%Not comparable
Terminal-Bench 2.0Source —74.6%Not comparable
cursorBench31Source —58.4%Not comparable
cursorBench32Source —62.3%Not comparable
AA Coding IndexSource —74.3%Not comparable
AA Terminal-Bench 2.1Source —84.6%Not comparable
Reasoning
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Claude Opus 4.8Result
AA-LCRSource 58.3%67.7%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
CritPtSource 2.8%20.9%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
KnowledgeClaude Opus 4.6 wins
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Claude Opus 4.8Result
GPQASource 91.3%93.6%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
GPQA-DSource 89.2%93.6%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
SuperGPQASource 95%—Not comparable
MMLU-ProSource 82%—Not comparable
MMLU-Pro (Arcee)Source 89.1%—Not comparable
HLESource 53%57.9%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
HLE w/o toolsSource 40%49.8%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
HealthBench HardSource 14.8%—Not comparable
MedXpertQA (Text)Source 52.1%—Not comparable
Artificial Analysis Intelligence IndexSource 37.8%55.7%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
AA-GPQA DiamondSource 84.0%92.0%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
AA-HLESource 18.6%45.7%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
AA-Omniscience IndexSource 3.5%27.4%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
AA-Omniscience AccuracySource 45.2%46.6%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
AA-Omniscience Hallucination RateSource 76.0%35.9%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
MathClaude Opus 4.8 wins
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Claude Opus 4.8Result
AIME25 (Arcee)Source 99.8%—Not comparable
FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3)Source 40.700%47.241%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4)Source 22.900%31.250%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
USAMO 2026Source —96.7%Not comparable
Multilingual
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Claude Opus 4.8Result
INCLUDESource —87.6%Not comparable
MultimodalClaude Opus 4.6 wins
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Claude Opus 4.8Result
MMMU-ProSource 77.3%—Not comparable
ERQASource 51.6%—Not comparable
ScreenSpot ProSource 83.1%87.9%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
MedXpertQA (MM)Source 64.8%—Not comparable
GDPval-AASource 1606—Not comparable
AA-MMMU-ProSource 72.5%—Not comparable
Design Arena WebsiteSource 13371281Claude Opus 4.6 leads
OfficeQA ProSource —66.2%Not comparable
CharXivSource —89.9%Not comparable
CharXiv w/o toolsSource —80.5%Not comparable
Inst. Following
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Claude Opus 4.8Result
AA-IFBenchSource 44.6%62.2%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Frequently Asked Questions (6)

Which is better, Claude Opus 4.6 or Claude Opus 4.8?

Claude Opus 4.8 is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 85 to 83. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Pro, where the scores are 53.4% and 69.2%.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude Opus 4.6 or Claude Opus 4.8?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 69.2 versus 62.7. Inside this category, AA-Omniscience Hallucination Rate is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Claude Opus 4.6 or Claude Opus 4.8?

Claude Opus 4.8 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 76.4 versus 64.1. Inside this category, FrontierCode is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Claude Opus 4.6 or Claude Opus 4.8?

Claude Opus 4.8 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 53.9 versus 36.3. Inside this category, FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4) is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Claude Opus 4.6 or Claude Opus 4.8?

Claude Opus 4.8 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 80.3 versus 73. Inside this category, DeepSearchQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Claude Opus 4.6 or Claude Opus 4.8?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 77.3 versus 77. Inside this category, Design Arena Website is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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