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Model comparison

Claude Opus 4.6 vs o4-mini (high)

Data verified

Head-to-head evidence from 2 shared benchmark results across 1 category. Overall scores shown here use the public BenchAlign v5 ranking lane.

68.59/100
Margin
18.6pts
← winning
49.98/100
1 category wins0 category wins

Public leaderboard positions: Claude Opus 4.6 #16 (Supported); o4-mini (high) #118 (Estimated). Intervals and evidence labels describe ranking uncertainty, not a guarantee for a specific workload.

Evidence parity. Claude Opus 4.6 and o4-mini (high) share 2 comparable benchmark results. 1 of 8 categories are comparable. 44 results are unique to Claude Opus 4.6; 0 to o4-mini (high).

Updated July 20, 2026
Shared results
2
Claude Opus 4.6 only
44
o4-mini (high) only
0
Comparable categories
1 / 8

Pick Claude Opus 4.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. o4-mini (high) only becomes the better choice if you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.

Confidence note. This is a partial-evidence comparison with 2 shared benchmark results across 1 evidence category; 1 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 4.6 is clearly ahead on the BenchAlign aggregate, 68.59 to 49.98. 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 mathematics, where it averages 36.3 against 20.2. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4), 22.900% to 6.250%.

o4-mini (high) 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 o4-mini (high).

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 o4-mini (high)
CategoryClaude Opus 4.6Δo4-mini (high)
MathClaude Opus 4.636.3Margin← 16.1o4-mini (high)20.2
AgenticClaude Opus 4.673.0MarginNo overlapo4-mini (high)Not measured
CodingClaude Opus 4.668.1MarginNo overlapo4-mini (high)Not measured
KnowledgeClaude Opus 4.669.1MarginNo overlapo4-mini (high)Not measured
MultimodalClaude Opus 4.677.3MarginNo overlapo4-mini (high)Not measured

Decisive benchmark drivers

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

More
A · Claude Opus 4.6B · o4-mini (high)

  1. FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4)

    Math
    Source ↗
    A 22.900%B 6.250%
    Winner: Claude Opus 4.6Δ 16.7
    FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4): Claude Opus 4.6 scored 22.900%; o4-mini (high) scored 6.250%. Claude Opus 4.6 wins this benchmark.

  2. FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3)

    Math
    Source ↗
    A 40.700%B 24.828%
    Winner: Claude Opus 4.6Δ 15.9
    FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3): Claude Opus 4.6 scored 40.700%; o4-mini (high) scored 24.828%. Claude Opus 4.6 wins this benchmark.

Operational comparison

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

MetricClaude Opus 4.6o4-mini (high)Comparison
Input / output priceUSD per 1M tokensClaude Opus 4.6$5 input / $25 outputo4-mini (high)Not availableA complete price comparison is not available.
Generation speedtokens per secondClaude Opus 4.640 tok/so4-mini (high)161 tok/so4-mini (high) has the higher measured throughput.
First-answer latencyseconds to first tokenClaude Opus 4.61.78 so4-mini (high)21.94 sClaude Opus 4.6 reaches the first token sooner.
Context windowmaximum listed tokensClaude Opus 4.61Mo4-mini (high)200KClaude Opus 4.6 lists the larger context window.

Benchmark Deep Dive

Agentic
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6o4-mini (high)Result
Terminal-Bench 2.0Source 65.4%—Not comparable
BrowseCompSource 83.7%—Not comparable
OSWorld-VerifiedSource 72.7%—Not comparable
τ²-bench resultsSource 84.8%—Not comparable
Claw-EvalSource 70.4%—Not comparable
DeepSearchQASource 73.7%—Not comparable
CyberGymSource 66.6%—Not comparable
Gert LabsSource 61.85%—Not comparable
ResearchClawBenchSource 19.9%—Not comparable
JobBenchSource 36.7%—Not comparable
Coding
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6o4-mini (high)Result
SWE-bench VerifiedSource 80.8%—Not comparable
SWE-bench Verified*Source 75.6%—Not comparable
LiveCodeBench ProSource 70.7%—Not comparable
SWE-bench ProSource 53.4%—Not comparable
SWE-RebenchSource 65.3%—Not comparable
React Native EvalsSource 84.1%—Not comparable
Vibe Code BenchSource 57.57%—Not comparable
AA-SciCodeSource 45.7%—Not comparable
FrontierCode 1.1 MainSource 26.9%—Not comparable
Reasoning
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6o4-mini (high)Result
AA-LCRSource 58.3%—Not comparable
CritPtSource 2.8%—Not comparable
Knowledge
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6o4-mini (high)Result
GPQASource 91.3%—Not comparable
GPQA-DSource 89.2%—Not comparable
SuperGPQASource 95%—Not comparable
MMLU-ProSource 82%—Not comparable
MMLU-Pro (Arcee)Source 89.1%—Not comparable
HLESource 53%—Not comparable
HLE w/o toolsSource 40%—Not comparable
HealthBench HardSource 14.8%—Not comparable
MedXpertQA (Text)Source 52.1%—Not comparable
Artificial Analysis Intelligence IndexSource 37.8%—Not comparable
AA-GPQA DiamondSource 84.0%—Not comparable
AA-HLESource 18.6%—Not comparable
AA-Omniscience IndexSource 3.5%—Not comparable
AA-Omniscience AccuracySource 45.2%—Not comparable
AA-Omniscience Hallucination RateSource 76.0%—Not comparable
MathClaude Opus 4.6 wins
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6o4-mini (high)Result
AIME25 (Arcee)Source 99.8%—Not comparable
FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3)Source 40.700%24.828%Claude Opus 4.6 leads
FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4)Source 22.900%6.250%Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Multimodal
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6o4-mini (high)Result
MMMU-ProSource 77.3%—Not comparable
ERQASource 51.6%—Not comparable
ScreenSpot ProSource 83.1%—Not comparable
MedXpertQA (MM)Source 64.8%—Not comparable
AA-MMMU-ProSource 72.5%—Not comparable
Design Arena WebsiteSource 1328—Not comparable
Inst. Following
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6o4-mini (high)Result
AA-IFBenchSource 44.6%—Not comparable
Frequently Asked Questions (2)

Which is better, Claude Opus 4.6 or o4-mini (high)?

Claude Opus 4.6 is ahead on BenchLM's BenchAlign leaderboard, 68.59 to 49.98. The biggest single separator in this matchup is FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4), where the scores are 22.900% and 6.250%.

Which is better for math, Claude Opus 4.6 or o4-mini (high)?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 36.3 versus 20.2. Inside this category, FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4) is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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