Head-to-head comparison across 3benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
Claude Opus 4.8
92
Claude Sonnet 5
94
Verified leaderboard positions: Claude Opus 4.8 #5 · Claude Sonnet 5 unranked
Pick Claude Sonnet 5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude Opus 4.8 only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority.
Agentic
+1.7 difference
Coding
+13.2 difference
Knowledge
+12.7 difference
Claude Opus 4.8
Claude Sonnet 5
$5 / $25
$3 / $15
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
1M
1M
Pick Claude Sonnet 5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude Opus 4.8 only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority.
Claude Sonnet 5 has the cleaner provisional overall profile here, landing at 94 versus 92. It is a real lead, but still close enough that category-level strengths matter more than the headline number.
Claude Sonnet 5's sharpest advantage is in agentic, where it averages 81.8 against 80.1. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SWE-bench Pro, 69.2% to 63.2%. Claude Opus 4.8 does hit back in coding, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.
Claude Opus 4.8 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 5.
Claude Sonnet 5 is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 94 to 92. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Pro, where the scores are 69.2% and 63.2%.
Claude Opus 4.8 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 70.1 versus 57.4. Inside this category, HLE w/o tools is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Opus 4.8 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 76.4 versus 63.2. Inside this category, SWE-bench Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Sonnet 5 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 81.8 versus 80.1. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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