# Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Sonnet 5

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Opus 4.6 and Claude Sonnet 5 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-opus-4-6-vs-claude-sonnet-5
- Last updated: September 18, 2026

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

## Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Sonnet 5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude Opus 4.6 only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Claude Sonnet 5 leads overall 69.68 to 69.21.
- The clearest category separation is in multimodal & grounded, where the averages are 59.6 for Claude Opus 4.6 and 77.4 for Claude Sonnet 5.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is FrontierCode 1.1 Main in Coding, with scores of 26.9% and 42.7%.
- Claude Sonnet 5 is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Claude Opus 4.6 | Claude Sonnet 5 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Type | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Reasoning | Non-Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Overall Score | 69.21 | 69.68 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 34 | 26 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $5.00 / $25.00 | $2.00 / $10.00 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Opus 4.6 public-lane score: 50.1 (Supported · #58/154)
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 65.9 (Supported · #11/154)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Claude Sonnet 5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 65.4% | 80.4% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| BrowseComp | 83.7% | 84.7% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| OSWorld-Verified | 72.7% | 81.2% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| 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% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ResearchClawBench | 19.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| JobBench | 36.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ApprenticeBench | 5% | 16% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| Terminal-Bench 3.0 | Coming soon | 14.6% | Coming soon |
| HLE w/ tools | Coming soon | 57.4% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Coming soon | 74.5% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Opus 4.6 public-lane score: 56.4 (Supported · #37/154)
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 63.9 (Supported · #13/154)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Claude Sonnet 5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 80.8% | 85.2% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| SWE-bench Verified* | 75.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench Pro | 70.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | 53.4% | 63.2% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| SWE-Rebench | 65.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| React Native Evals | 84.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Vibe Code Bench | 57.57% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | 26.9% | 42.7% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| SWE Multilingual | Coming soon | 78.3% | Coming soon |
| SWE Multimodal | Coming soon | 28.1% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | Coming soon | 80.4% | Coming soon |
| cursorBench32 | Coming soon | 61.5% | Coming soon |
| VulcanBench CII v1 | Coming soon | 89.2% | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | Coming soon | 82.4% | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | Coming soon | 79.6% | Coming soon |
| cursorBench40 | Coming soon | 34.1% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.6 public-lane score: 59.6 (#28/48)
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 77.4 (#14/48)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Claude Sonnet 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 |
| CharXiv | Coming soon | 88.3% | Coming soon |
| CharXiv w/o tools | Coming soon | 77% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.6 public-lane score: 67.1 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 77.4 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

### Knowledge

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.6 public-lane score: 61.1 (Estimated · #34/184)
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 66.5 (Supported · #20/184)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Claude Sonnet 5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 91.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| 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% | 57.4% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| HLE w/o tools | 40% | 43.2% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| HealthBench Hard | 14.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MedXpertQA (Text) | 52.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE-Verified | Coming soon | 31.0% | Coming soon |
| LABBench2 | Coming soon | 80.1% | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Coming soon | 88.9% | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | Coming soon | 87.5% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.6 public-lane score: 51 (#79/124)
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: Coming soon

### Mathematics

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.6 public-lane score: 58.5 (Unranked · 3 rankable rows)
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Claude Sonnet 5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME25 (Arcee) | 99.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3) | 40.700% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4) | 22.900% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Opus 4.6 or Claude Sonnet 5?

Claude Sonnet 5 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Opus 4.6 and Claude Sonnet 5?

The widest category gap is in multimodal & grounded, where the averages are 59.6 for Claude Opus 4.6 and 77.4 for Claude Sonnet 5.

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

Claude Opus 4.6 currently has 34 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does Claude Sonnet 5 cover on BenchLM?

Claude Sonnet 5 currently has 26 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 5 vs Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive)](/compare/claude-opus-4-6-thinking-vs-claude-sonnet-5)
- [Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-claude-opus-4-6)
- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-claude-sonnet-5)

## Explore More

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