# Claude Opus 4.8 vs Claude Sonnet 5

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Opus 4.8 and Claude Sonnet 5 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-opus-4-8-vs-claude-sonnet-5
- Last updated: September 29, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 20
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.7

## Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Opus 4.8 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude Sonnet 5 only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Claude Opus 4.8 leads overall 70.39 to 66.98.
- The clearest category separation is in reasoning, where the averages are 59.1 for Claude Opus 4.8 and 78.7 for Claude Sonnet 5.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is SWE Multimodal in Coding, with scores of 38.4% and 28.1%.
- 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 4.8 | Claude Sonnet 5 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Type | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Overall Score | 70.39 | 66.98 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 38 | 26 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $5.00 / $25.00 | $2.00 / $10.00 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: 61.6 (Supported · #15/117)
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 64.6 (Supported · #12/117)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Claude Sonnet 5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 3.0 | 21.1% | 14.6% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 74.6% | 80.4% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| BrowseComp | 84.3% | 84.7% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| DeepSearchQA | 93.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | 83.4% | 81.2% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| Finance Agent v2 | 53.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | 82.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Toolathlon | 59.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Gert Labs | 72.97% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ResearchClawBench | 21.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 20.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 71.9% | 74.5% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| HLE w/ tools | Coming soon | 57.4% | Coming soon |
| ApprenticeBench | Coming soon | 16% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Claude Opus 4.8
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: 62.2 (Supported · #14/142)
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 59.8 (Supported · #19/142)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Claude Sonnet 5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 88.6% | 85.2% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| SWE-bench Pro | 69.2% | 63.2% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| SWE Multilingual | 84.4% | 78.3% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| SWE Multimodal | 38.4% | 28.1% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 74.6% | 80.4% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| cursorBench31 | 58.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| cursorBench32 | 62.3% | 61.5% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | 46.5% | 42.7% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 87.8% | 82.4% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 88.6% | 79.6% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| VulcanBench CII v1 | Coming soon | 89.2% | Coming soon |
| cursorBench40 | Coming soon | 34.1% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: 59.1 (#22/27)
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 78.7 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Claude Sonnet 5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 72.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ARC-AGI-3 | 1.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Directional only
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: 87.7 (#7/50)
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 78.4 (#15/50)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Claude Sonnet 5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| OfficeQA Pro | 66.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ScreenSpot Pro | 87.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | 89.9% | 88.3% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| CharXiv w/o tools | 80.5% | 77% | Claude Opus 4.8 |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Claude Opus 4.8
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: 70.1 (Supported · #12/168)
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 64.5 (Supported · #26/168)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Claude Sonnet 5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 93.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA-D | 93.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE | 57.9% | 57.4% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| HLE w/o tools | 49.8% | 43.2% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 92.4% | 88.9% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 89.6% | 87.5% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| HLE-Verified | Coming soon | 31.0% | Coming soon |
| LABBench2 | Coming soon | 80.1% | Coming soon |

### Multilingual

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Claude Sonnet 5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| INCLUDE | 87.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: 74 (#60/124)
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: Coming soon

### Mathematics

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: 65.2 (#2/7)
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Claude Sonnet 5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| USAMO 2026 | 96.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3) | 47.241% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4) | 31.250% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Opus 4.8 or Claude Sonnet 5?

Claude Opus 4.8 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Opus 4.8 and Claude Sonnet 5?

The widest category gap is in reasoning, where the averages are 59.1 for Claude Opus 4.8 and 78.7 for Claude Sonnet 5.

### How many benchmarks does Claude Opus 4.8 cover on BenchLM?

Claude Opus 4.8 currently has 38 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 4.8 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/claude-opus-4-8-vs-gpt-6-astra)
- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-gpt-6-astra)
- [Claude Opus 4.8 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-4-8-vs-claude-opus-5-5)
- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-claude-sonnet-5)

## Explore More

- [Claude Opus 4.8 profile](/models/claude-opus-4-8)
- [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)