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Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Sonnet 5

Updated October 21, 2026. 88 benchmarks have a result for both. Coding is ranked on the Vibe Coding Index; every other board is shown as published.

Replace Claude Opus 4.6 Replace Claude Sonnet 5
Claude Opus 4.6Anthropic
Coding
66.9
Overall
31.9
Output $/M
$25.00
64
Claude Sonnet 5Anthropic
Coding
63.5
Overall
38.2
Output $/M
$10.00
22
vs boards won of 88 shared, 2 tied

Decision reading

Pick Claude Opus 4.6 for coding: it scores 66.9 on the Vibe Coding Index against 63.5 for Claude Sonnet 5.

Pick Claude Sonnet 5 when output tokens cost 2.5x less, or when what matters is SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) or Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI), where it leads.

Model AClaude Opus 4.6Anthropic66.9/1002 independent benchmarks$1.56 per solved taskModel BClaude Sonnet 5Anthropic63.5/1002 independent benchmarks$1.87 per solved task
Shared results
88
Claude Opus 4.6 only
20
Claude Sonnet 5 only
32
Like-for-like categories
8 of 9

Shared results can support a head-to-head reading. Results only one model has describe coverage, not superiority.

Which one for your work

Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.

At a glance

Coding index
Claude Opus 4.6 66.9 from 2 benchmarks, Claude Sonnet 5 63.5 from 2 benchmarks.
Widest category
General, 9.1 points apart on average over 29 shared benchmarks.
Widest single gap
ProofBench: Claude Opus 4.6 50.0% against Claude Sonnet 5 77.0%, 27.0 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
Output price
Claude Opus 4.6 $25.00 against Claude Sonnet 5 $10.00 per million output tokens, 2.5x apart.
Context window
Both take 1M tokens.

Benchmark by benchmark

First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.

Boards won, where both have a result
CategoryClaude Opus 4.6BarsClaude Sonnet 5Ties
Coding84
Intelligence02
Agentic work16
Reasoning841 tie
Math33
Knowledge101
Web design701 tie
General272
All shared boards64222 ties
CodingLike-for-likeFour of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index84
Coding benchmarks for Claude Opus 4.6 and Claude Sonnet 5
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Claude Sonnet 5Leader
SWE-bench Verified75.6%Not measuredOnly Claude Opus 4.6 measured
SWE-bench Multilingual72.0%Not measuredOnly Claude Opus 4.6 measured
LiveBench codingNot measured74.7%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
LMArena WebDev15471540Claude Opus 4.6
AA Coding IndexNot measured71.5Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
LiveCodeBench (Vals AI)84.7%82.4%Claude Opus 4.6
SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI)78.2%79.6%Claude Sonnet 5
Terminal-Bench 4 (Vals AI)Not measured10.6%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI)57.6%81.3%Claude Sonnet 5
Code migration (Vals AI)Not measured44.4%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
ProgramBench (Vals AI)Not measured0.0%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
IOI (Vals AI)Not measured45.0%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI)Not measured74.5%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Vibe Code Bench 1-100 (Vals AI)Not measured13.8%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
SkillsBench (Vals AI)Not measured46.5%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
CyberBench (Vals AI)Not measured70.3%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
SciCodeNot measured54.3%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run)48.5%Not measuredOnly Claude Opus 4.6 measured
Terminal-Bench79.8%Not measuredOnly Claude Opus 4.6 measured
FrontierCode26.6%42.7%Claude Sonnet 5
GSO-Bench41.2%37.3%Claude Opus 4.6
WeirdML78.0%68.8%Claude Opus 4.6
Cybench93.0%Not measuredOnly Claude Opus 4.6 measured
ALE-BenchNot measured1463.1Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
LMArena Text: coding15341483Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: software and IT15271474Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena WebDev: React15391541Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena WebDev: HTML15591527Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena WebDev: from an image15431540Claude Opus 4.6
Neither model has a result on the other 9 boards here
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index02
Intelligence benchmarks for Claude Opus 4.6 and Claude Sonnet 5
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Claude Sonnet 5Leader
AA Intelligence Index31.938.2Claude Sonnet 5
Epoch Capabilities Index155.7156.9Claude Sonnet 5
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index16
Agentic work benchmarks for Claude Opus 4.6 and Claude Sonnet 5
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Claude Sonnet 5Leader
AA Agentic IndexNot measured43.6Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Design Arena: agents building web apps12061245Claude Sonnet 5
Design Arena: agents building full-stack apps12201249Claude Sonnet 5
Design Arena: agents building mobile apps12071215Claude Sonnet 5
Design Arena: agents building Android apps12041231Claude Sonnet 5
Design Arena: agents building Godot gamesNot measured1225Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Design Arena: agents building games12141227Claude Sonnet 5
Design Arena: HTML slidesNot measured1218Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Design Arena: PowerPoint slidesNot measured1216Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Design Arena: spreadsheetsNot measured1004Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
LiveBench researchNot measured82.8%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
LiveBench browserNot measured72.0%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
LiveBench long agenticNot measured39.0%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
SREBench (Vals AI)Not measured0.4%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Finance Agent (Vals AI)Not measured53.9%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI)Not measured29.4%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Legal Research Bench (Vals AI)Not measured41.8%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI)Not measured66.3%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Terminal-Bench-Science (Vals AI)Not measured5.7%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
τ²-Bench Telecom92.1%Not measuredOnly Claude Opus 4.6 measured
APEX-Agents46.3%54.5%Claude Sonnet 5
METR time horizons78.9%Not measuredOnly Claude Opus 4.6 measured
Remote Labor Index4.2%Not measuredOnly Claude Opus 4.6 measured
DeepResearch Bench55.3%Not measuredOnly Claude Opus 4.6 measured
Vending-Bench 2$8,018$6,378Claude Opus 4.6
Neither model has a result on the other 14 boards here
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index84
Reasoning benchmarks for Claude Opus 4.6 and Claude Sonnet 5
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Claude Sonnet 5Leader
GPQA Diamond89.7%88.9%Claude Opus 4.6
LiveBench reasoningNot measured88.7%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
MMMU Pro (Vals AI)83.9%83.0%Claude Opus 4.6
GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run)89.6%91.1%Claude Sonnet 5
Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run)39.9%41.3%Claude Sonnet 5
GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run)90.5%90.5%Tie
ARC-AGI94.0%Not measuredOnly Claude Opus 4.6 measured
ARC-AGI-269.2%Not measuredOnly Claude Opus 4.6 measured
SimpleBench67.6%60.6%Claude Opus 4.6
Chess puzzles21.0%45.0%Claude Sonnet 5
Mystery game puzzles25.0%35.0%Claude Sonnet 5
EBR-bench12.7%Not measuredOnly Claude Opus 4.6 measured
LMArena Text: hard prompts15251461Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: expert15441489Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: hard prompts in English15301464Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Vision: diagrams13401293Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Vision: homework13371311Claude Opus 4.6
Neither model has a result on the other 4 boards here
MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index33
Math benchmarks for Claude Opus 4.6 and Claude Sonnet 5
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Claude Sonnet 5Leader
AIME95.6%Not measuredOnly Claude Opus 4.6 measured
OTIS Mock AIME94.4%94.7%Claude Sonnet 5
FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 366.0%65.6%Claude Opus 4.6
FrontierMath, tier 426.8%29.3%Claude Sonnet 5
ProofBench50.0%77.0%Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Text: math15181467Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: mathematical work15251481Claude Opus 4.6
Neither model has a result on the other 6 boards here
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index101
Knowledge benchmarks for Claude Opus 4.6 and Claude Sonnet 5
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Claude Sonnet 5Leader
MMLU Pro89.1%87.5%Claude Opus 4.6
LegalBench (Vals AI)85.3%83.9%Claude Opus 4.6
CaseLaw (Vals AI)62.1%Not measuredOnly Claude Opus 4.6 measured
CorpFin (Vals AI)67.0%67.0%Claude Opus 4.6
TaxEval (Vals AI)76.0%75.6%Claude Opus 4.6
MortgageTax (Vals AI)68.5%70.0%Claude Sonnet 5
MedQA (Vals AI)95.4%Not measuredOnly Claude Opus 4.6 measured
MedCode (Vals AI)49.1%47.5%Claude Opus 4.6
SimpleQA Verified47.0%33.7%Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: science15191460Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare15041442Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: legal and government15121454Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: business and finance14971436Claude Opus 4.6
Neither model has a result on the other 4 boards here
Web designLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index70
Web design benchmarks for Claude Opus 4.6 and Claude Sonnet 5
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Claude Sonnet 5Leader
Design Arena: websites12911274Claude Opus 4.6
Design Arena: UI components12841279Claude Opus 4.6
Design Arena: game dev12781278Tie
Design Arena: data viz12791251Claude Opus 4.6
Design Arena: 3D12741261Claude Opus 4.6
Design Arena: all code categories12891276Claude Opus 4.6
Design Arena: SVG12271193Claude Opus 4.6
Design Arena: ASCII art12541207Claude Opus 4.6
LiveBench designNot measured82.0%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index272
General benchmarks for Claude Opus 4.6 and Claude Sonnet 5
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Claude Sonnet 5Leader
LiveBench data analysisNot measured71.7%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI)Not measured66.0%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
SAGE (Vals AI)51.6%48.9%Claude Opus 4.6
MedScribe (Vals AI)86.7%76.0%Claude Opus 4.6
Vals Multimodal IndexNot measured68.8%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
IFBench53.1%Not measuredOnly Claude Opus 4.6 measured
Long context reasoning (AA-LCR)78.0%82.0%Claude Sonnet 5
DTBench91.2%92.5%Claude Sonnet 5
LMCA55.8%50.0%Claude Opus 4.6
CL-bench20.7%Not measuredOnly Claude Opus 4.6 measured
Surface Evolver BenchNot measured60.0%Only Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Furniture assembly28.3%Not measuredOnly Claude Opus 4.6 measured
CL-bench Life17.0%Not measuredOnly Claude Opus 4.6 measured
LMArena Text15011442Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: instruction following15211452Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: creative writing15051416Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Vision13161273Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: English15111450Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: non-English14881431Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: Chinese15511478Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: German15001442Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: Japanese14881422Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: Korean14641412Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: French15121463Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: Spanish15101438Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: Russian14971450Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: Polish14991425Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: multi-turn15111453Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: longer queries15181462Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: writing and language15021436Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text: entertainment and media14921411Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Vision: English13241275Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Vision: Chinese13701331Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Vision: reading text13261288Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Vision: humor13141261Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Vision: recognizing things1274Not measuredOnly Claude Opus 4.6 measured
LMArena Vision: creative writing13311246Claude Opus 4.6
LMArena Document15071466Claude Opus 4.6
Neither model has a result on the other 8 boards here
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
Image generation benchmarks for Claude Opus 4.6 and Claude Sonnet 5
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Claude Sonnet 5Leader
Neither model has a result on 5 boards here

What each workload costs

Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.

Chat turn

1K input + 500 output tokens

Claude Opus 4.6$0.018Fits in one request
Claude Sonnet 5$0.0070Fits in one request

Claude Sonnet 5 costs less

Repository review

50K input + 3K output tokens

Claude Opus 4.6$0.325Fits in one request
Claude Sonnet 5$0.130Fits in one request

Claude Sonnet 5 costs less

Agent loop

200K input + 10K output tokens

Claude Opus 4.6$1.25Fits in one request
Claude Sonnet 5$0.500Fits in one request

Claude Sonnet 5 costs less

Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.

Specification differences

The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.

Specifications of Claude Opus 4.6 and Claude Sonnet 5
SpecificationAnthropic Claude Opus 4.6Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5
MakerAnthropicAnthropic
WeightsNo public weights listedNo public weights listed
ReleasedFebruary 4, 2026June 30, 2026
Context window1M1M
Input $/Mtok$5.00$2.00
Output $/Mtok$25.00$10.00
Coding index66.963.5
Independent measurements behind it22
Cost per solved task$1.56$1.87
SourceOpenRouter listingOpenRouter listing

Questions

Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Claude Sonnet 5 for coding?

Pick Claude Opus 4.6 for coding: it scores 66.9 on the Vibe Coding Index against 63.5 for Claude Sonnet 5. Pick Claude Sonnet 5 when output tokens cost 2.5x less, or when what matters is SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) or Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI), where it leads.

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.6 or Claude Sonnet 5?

Claude Opus 4.6 costs $5.00 per million input tokens and $25.00 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 5 costs $2.00 and $10.00. Per solved SWE-bench Verified task, Claude Opus 4.6 costs $1.56 and Claude Sonnet 5 $1.87.

Which has the bigger context window, Claude Opus 4.6 or Claude Sonnet 5?

Neither: both take 1M tokens.

How many benchmarks is the Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Sonnet 5 comparison based on?

88 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. Claude Opus 4.6's coding index rests on 2 independent benchmarks and Claude Sonnet 5's on 2. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.

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