Side-by-side benchmark comparison across knowledge, coding, math, and reasoning.
Claude Opus 4.6 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 90 to 56. 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 coding, where it averages 82 against 49.3. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SWE-bench Verified, 80 to 49.3.
Claude Opus 4.6 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $15.00 input / $75.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $1.10 input / $4.40 output per 1M tokens for o3-mini. That is roughly 17.0x on output cost alone. o3-mini 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. Claude Opus 4.6 gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 200K for o3-mini.
Pick Claude Opus 4.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. o3-mini only becomes the better choice if you want the cheaper token bill or you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.
Claude Opus 4.6
85.7
o3-mini
82.1
Claude Opus 4.6
82
o3-mini
49.3
Claude Opus 4.6
97.3
o3-mini
87.3
Claude Opus 4.6
95
o3-mini
93.9
Claude Opus 4.6 is ahead overall, 90 to 56. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Verified, where the scores are 80 and 49.3.
Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 85.7 versus 82.1. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 82 versus 49.3. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 97.3 versus 87.3. Inside this category, AIME 2024 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 95 versus 93.9. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Get notified when new models drop, benchmark scores change, or the leaderboard shifts. One email per week.
Free. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. We only store derived location metadata for consent routing.