Head-to-head comparison across 3benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
Claude Opus 4.6
91
Claude Sonnet 4.6
85
Verified leaderboard positions: Claude Opus 4.6 #3 · Claude Sonnet 4.6 unranked
Pick Claude Opus 4.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude Sonnet 4.6 only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.
Agentic
+7.3 difference
Coding
+2.0 difference
Knowledge
+2.5 difference
Claude Opus 4.6
Claude Sonnet 4.6
$5 / $25
$3 / $15
40 t/s
44 t/s
1.78s
1.48s
1M
200K
Pick Claude Opus 4.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude Sonnet 4.6 only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.
Claude Opus 4.6 is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 91 to 85. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
Claude Opus 4.6's sharpest advantage is in agentic, where it averages 72.6 against 65.3. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is Terminal-Bench 2.0, 65.4% to 59.1%. Claude Sonnet 4.6 does hit back in coding, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.
Claude Opus 4.6 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $5.00 input / $25.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $3.00 input / $15.00 output per 1M tokens for Claude Sonnet 4.6. Claude Opus 4.6 gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 200K for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
Claude Opus 4.6 is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 91 to 85. The biggest single separator in this matchup is Terminal-Bench 2.0, where the scores are 65.4% and 59.1%.
Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 76.2 versus 73.7. Inside this category, HLE is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 66.4 versus 64.4. Inside this category, SWE-Rebench is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 72.6 versus 65.3. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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