Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.
Claude Opus 4.6 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 85 to 66. 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 75.1 against 47.1. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SWE-bench Verified, 80 to 48.
Claude Opus 4.6 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $15.00 input / $75.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.10 input / $0.30 output per 1M tokens for Step 3.5 Flash. That is roughly 250.0x on output cost alone. Claude Opus 4.6 gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 256K for Step 3.5 Flash.
Pick Claude Opus 4.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Step 3.5 Flash only becomes the better choice if you want the cheaper token bill.
Claude Opus 4.6
79.2
Step 3.5 Flash
60.2
Claude Opus 4.6
75.1
Step 3.5 Flash
47.1
Claude Opus 4.6
94.6
Step 3.5 Flash
66.7
Claude Opus 4.6
93.1
Step 3.5 Flash
78.3
Claude Opus 4.6
78.9
Step 3.5 Flash
60.8
Claude Opus 4.6
95
Step 3.5 Flash
87
Claude Opus 4.6
94.7
Step 3.5 Flash
82.8
Claude Opus 4.6
97.2
Step 3.5 Flash
84.5
Claude Opus 4.6 is ahead overall, 85 to 66. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Verified, where the scores are 80 and 48.
Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 78.9 versus 60.8. Inside this category, HLE is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 75.1 versus 47.1. 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 97.2 versus 84.5. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 93.1 versus 78.3. Inside this category, MRCRv2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.2 versus 60.2. Inside this category, OSWorld-Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 94.6 versus 66.7. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro 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 87. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 94.7 versus 82.8. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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