# Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Sonnet 4.5

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

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

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 9
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.8

## Quick Verdict

Claude Opus 4.6 leads by point estimate. Conditional score ranges do not establish rank confidence. Choose using the category evidence and your own workload tests.

## Summary

- Claude Opus 4.6 has the higher overall point estimate 62.39 to 47.96. Conditional score ranges do not establish rank confidence.
- The clearest category separation is in reasoning, where the averages are 71.9 for Claude Opus 4.6 and 22.9 for Claude Sonnet 4.5.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3) in Mathematics, with scores of 65.965% and 23.860%.
- Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.
- Claude Opus 4.6 also has the larger context window at 1M.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Claude Opus 4.6 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Type | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Reasoning | Non-Reasoning | Non-Reasoning |
| Context | 1M | 200K |
| Overall Score | 62.39 | 47.96 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 36 | 12 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $5.00 / $25.00 | $3.00 / $15.00 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Directional only
- Claude Opus 4.6 public-lane score: 45.7 (Supported · #57/128)
- Claude Sonnet 4.5 public-lane score: 35.1 (Estimated · #81/128)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 65.4% | 50% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| BrowseComp | 83.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | 72.7% | 61.4% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| AndroidWorld | 62.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Claw-Eval | 70.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| DeepSearchQA | 73.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CyberGym | 66.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Gert Labs | 61.85% | 48.51% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| ResearchClawBench | 19.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| JobBench | 36.7% | 27.7% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| ApprenticeBench | 5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| VITA-Bench | Coming soon | 17.0% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Opus 4.6 public-lane score: 46.1 (Supported · #52/150)
- Claude Sonnet 4.5 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 80.8% | 77.2% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| SWE-bench Verified* | 75.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench Pro | 70.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | 53.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-Rebench | 65.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| React Native Evals | 84.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 65.4% | 50.0% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| Vibe Code Bench | 57.57% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | 26.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Opus 4.6 public-lane score: 71.9 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Claude Sonnet 4.5 public-lane score: 22.9 (Unranked · 1 rankable row)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| ARC-AGI-2 | Coming soon | 13.6% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Opus 4.6 public-lane score: 74.5 (#25/54)
- Claude Sonnet 4.5 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMMU-Pro | 77.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ERQA | 51.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ScreenSpot Pro | 83.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MedXpertQA (MM) | 64.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Opus 4.6 public-lane score: 59 (Estimated · #52/184)
- Claude Sonnet 4.5 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 91.3% | 83.4% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| GPQA-D | 89.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SuperGPQA | 95% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro | 82% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro (Arcee) | 89.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE | 53% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | 40% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HealthBench Hard | 14.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MedXpertQA (Text) | 52.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Opus 4.6 public-lane score: 52.4 (#87/148)
- Claude Sonnet 4.5 public-lane score: Coming soon

### Mathematics

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Opus 4.6 public-lane score: 69.1 (Unranked · 3 rankable rows)
- Claude Sonnet 4.5 public-lane score: 36.4 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME25 (Arcee) | 99.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3) | 65.965% | 23.860% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4) | 26.829% | 2.439% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| AIME 2025 | Coming soon | 87% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

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

Claude Opus 4.6 has the higher overall point estimate. Conditional score ranges do not establish rank confidence.

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

The widest category gap is in reasoning, where the averages are 71.9 for Claude Opus 4.6 and 22.9 for Claude Sonnet 4.5.

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

Claude Opus 4.6 currently has 36 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

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

Claude Sonnet 4.5 currently has 12 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

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

## Explore More

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