# Claude Opus 4.5 vs Claude Sonnet 4.6

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Opus 4.5 and Claude Sonnet 4.6 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-opus-4-5-vs-claude-sonnet-4-6
- Last updated: October 17, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 13
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.8

## Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude Opus 4.5 only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads overall 55.89 to 54.05.
- The clearest category separation is in instruction following, where the averages are 31.9 for Claude Opus 4.5 and 48 for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is SuperGPQA in Knowledge, with scores of 70.6% and 95%.
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Claude Opus 4.5 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Type | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Reasoning | Non-Reasoning | Non-Reasoning |
| Context | 200K | 200K |
| Overall Score | 54.05 | 55.89 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 61 | 28 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $5.00 / $25.00 | $3.00 / $15.00 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Directional only
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 32.3 (Estimated · #89/128)
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 46.3 (Supported · #55/128)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 59.3% | 59.1% | Claude Opus 4.5 |
| OSWorld-Verified | 66.3% | 72.1% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| OSWorld | 66.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Claw-Eval | 59.6% | 67.8% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| QwenClawBench | 52.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| τ³-bench results | 70.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| VITA-Bench | 23.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| DeepPlanning | 26.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Toolathlon | 43.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | 42.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MCP-Tasks | 71.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| WideResearch | 76.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CyberGym | 50.6% | 65.2% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| Gert Labs | 64.23% | 62.92% | Claude Opus 4.5 |
| JobBench | 32.3% | 36.9% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| OSWorld 2.0 | Coming soon | 8.3% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Coming soon | 57.3% | Coming soon |
| ApprenticeBench | Coming soon | 2% | Coming soon |
| MazeBench | Coming soon | 0% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Directional only
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 40.3 (Estimated · #64/150)
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 44.7 (Supported · #54/150)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 80.9% | 79.6% | Claude Opus 4.5 |
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 84.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | 57.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE Multilingual | 77.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| NL2Repo | 43.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 59.3% | 59.1% | Claude Opus 4.5 |
| SWE-Rebench | Coming soon | 60.7% | Coming soon |
| React Native Evals | Coming soon | 80.6% | Coming soon |
| Vibe Code Bench | Coming soon | 51.48% | Coming soon |
| cursorBench31 | Coming soon | 48.8% | Coming soon |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | Coming soon | 24.3% | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | Coming soon | 82.1% | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | Coming soon | 77.4% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 78.3 (Unranked · 4 rankable rows)
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 62.8 (Unranked · 4 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| LongBench v2 | 64.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| AI-Needle | 74% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ARC-AGI-2 | Coming soon | 58.3% | Coming soon |
| ARC-AGI-1 | Coming soon | 86.00% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Directional only
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 48.6 (#49/54)
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 58.7 (#45/54)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMMU | 80.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMMU-Pro | 70.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| RealWorldQA | 77.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OmniDocBench 1.5 | 87.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Video-MME (with subtitle) | 77.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Video-MME (w/o subtitle) | 81.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MathVision | 74.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| We-Math | 70.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| DynaMath | 79.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SimpleVQA | 65.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | 68.5% | 77.4% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| CountBench | 90.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| AI2D_TEST | 87.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ERQA | 46.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| VideoMMMU | 84.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MLVU (M-Avg) | 81.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ScreenSpot Pro | 45.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| V* | 67.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Directional only
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 51.2 (Estimated · #77/184)
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 55.4 (Supported · #58/184)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 87% | 89.9% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| SuperGPQA | 70.6% | 95% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| MMLU-Pro | 89.5% | 79.2% | Claude Opus 4.5 |
| MMLU-Redux | 96.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| C-Eval | 92.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE | 30.8% | 49% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Coming soon | 85.6% | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | Coming soon | 87.3% | Coming soon |

### Multilingual

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 96.5 (#2/17)
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMLU-ProX | 85.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| NOVA-63 | 56.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| INCLUDE | 86.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| PolyMath | 79.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MAXIFE | 79.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Directional only
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 31.9 (#131/148)
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 48 (#99/148)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFEval | 90.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| IFBench | 58% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 61.3 (#9/12)
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME26 | 95.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2025 | 92.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HMMT Nov 2025 | 93.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2026 | 85.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMAnswerBench | 84.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3) | 34.386% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4) | 4.878% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Opus 4.5 or Claude Sonnet 4.6?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Opus 4.5 and Claude Sonnet 4.6?

The widest category gap is in instruction following, where the averages are 31.9 for Claude Opus 4.5 and 48 for Claude Sonnet 4.6.

### How many benchmarks does Claude Opus 4.5 cover on BenchLM?

Claude Opus 4.5 currently has 61 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does Claude Sonnet 4.6 cover on BenchLM?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 currently has 28 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Claude Opus 4.5 vs Claude Opus 4.5 Thinking](/compare/claude-opus-4-5-vs-claude-opus-4-5-thinking)
- [Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Claude Opus 4.5 Thinking](/compare/claude-opus-4-5-thinking-vs-claude-sonnet-4-6)
- [Claude Opus 4.5 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-4-5-vs-claude-opus-5-5)
- [Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-claude-sonnet-4-6)

## Explore More

- [Claude Opus 4.5 profile](/models/claude-opus-4-5)
- [Claude Sonnet 4.6 profile](/models/claude-sonnet-4-6)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)