Claude Opus 4.6 vs Sonar
Updated October 21, 2026. 3 benchmarks have a result for both. Coding is ranked on the Vibe Coding Index; every other board is shown as published.
vs boards won of 3 shared
Decision reading
Only Claude Opus 4.6 has a coding score, 57.2 on the Vibe Coding Index; Sonar has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Sonar has the edge where output tokens cost 25.0x less.
Model AClaude Opus 4.6Anthropic57.2/1004 independent benchmarks$1.56 per solved taskModel BSonarPerplexityNot benchmarkedNo coding benchmarkNo cost per solved task
- Shared results
- 3
- Claude Opus 4.6 only
- 105
- Sonar only
- 2
- Like-for-like categories
- 2 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.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, six public coding benchmarks
No call
Only Claude Opus 4.6 has a coding score, so no call is made.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
Claude Opus 4.6
Claude Opus 4.6 leads, 31.9 against 7.7.
Same board, both measured
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only Claude Opus 4.6 has a GPQA Diamond result, 89.7%.
Directional only
Math
AIME
No call
Only Claude Opus 4.6 has a AIME result, 95.6%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only Claude Opus 4.6 has a MMLU Pro result, 89.1%.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
No call
Only Claude Opus 4.6 has a Design Arena: websites result, 1291.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
Claude Opus 4.6
Claude Opus 4.6 takes 1M tokens against 127K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Sonar
Claude Opus 4.6 $0.018, Sonar $0.0015 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
No call
Only Claude Opus 4.6 has the number, $1.56.
Directional only
At a glance
- Coding index
- Claude Opus 4.6 57.2 from 4 benchmarks, Sonar not benchmarked.
- Widest category
- Reasoning, 38.8 points apart on average over 2 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run): Claude Opus 4.6 89.6% against Sonar 47.1%, 42.5 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Claude Opus 4.6 $25.00 against Sonar $1.00 per million output tokens, 25.0x apart.
- Context window
- Claude Opus 4.6 takes 1M tokens, Sonar 127K.
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.
| Category | Claude Opus 4.6 | Bars | Sonar | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence | 1 | 0 | ||
| Reasoning | 2 | 0 | ||
| All shared boards | 3 | 0 |
CodingDirectional onlySix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index18 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Sonar | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified | 75.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | 72.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena WebDev | 1547 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | 84.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | 78.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 57.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 29.5% | Only Sonar measured |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | 48.5% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Terminal-Bench | 79.8% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| FrontierCode | 26.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| GSO-Bench | 41.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| WeirdML | 78.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Cybench | 93.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1534 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1527 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: React | 1539 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | 1559 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: from an image | 1543 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 20 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Sonar | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 31.9 | 7.7 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 155.7 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
Agentic workDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index11 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Sonar | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: agents building web apps | 1206 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building full-stack apps | 1220 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building mobile apps | 1206 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Android apps | 1203 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building games | 1212 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 92.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| APEX-Agents | 46.3% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| METR time horizons | 78.9% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Remote Labor Index | 4.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| DeepResearch Bench | 55.3% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Vending-Bench 2 | $8,018 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 28 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Sonar | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 89.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | 83.9% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 89.6% | 47.1% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 39.9% | 4.9% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 90.5% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| ARC-AGI | 94.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 69.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| SimpleBench | 67.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Chess puzzles | 21.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Mystery game puzzles | 25.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| EBR-bench | 12.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1525 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1544 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1530 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: diagrams | 1340 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: homework | 1337 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 5 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index7 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Sonar | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | 95.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 94.4% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | 66.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| FrontierMath, tier 4 | 26.8% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| ProofBench | 50.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1518 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1525 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 6 boards here | |||
KnowledgeDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index14 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Sonar | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | 89.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 85.3% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| CaseLaw (Vals AI) | 62.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | 67.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | 76.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | 68.5% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| MedQA (Vals AI) | 95.4% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | 49.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 68.9% | Only Sonar measured |
| SimpleQA Verified | 47.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1519 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1504 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1512 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1497 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 3 boards here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index8 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Sonar | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1291 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1284 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1277 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1279 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1274 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1289 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: SVG | 1228 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | 1254 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here | |||
GeneralDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index34 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Sonar | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 51.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | 86.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| IFBench | 53.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 78.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| DTBench | 91.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMCA | 55.8% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| CL-bench | 20.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Furniture assembly | 28.3% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| CL-bench Life | 17.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text | 1501 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1521 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1505 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision | 1316 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1511 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1488 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1551 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: German | 1500 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1488 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1464 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: French | 1512 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1510 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1497 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1499 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1511 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1518 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1502 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1492 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: English | 1324 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: Chinese | 1370 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: reading text | 1326 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: humor | 1314 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: recognizing things | 1274 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: creative writing | 1331 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Document | 1507 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 12 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Sonar | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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
Sonar$0.0015Fits in one request
Sonar costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Claude Opus 4.6$0.325Fits in one request
Sonar$0.053Fits in one request
Sonar costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Claude Opus 4.6$1.25Fits in one request
Sonar$0.210Exceeds the context window
Sonar 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.
| Specification | Anthropic Claude Opus 4.6 | Perplexity Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Anthropic | Perplexity |
| Weights | No public weights listed | No public weights listed |
| Released | February 4, 2026 | January 27, 2025 |
| Context window | 1M | 127K |
| Input $/Mtok | $5.00 | $1.00 |
| Output $/Mtok | $25.00 | $1.00 |
| Coding index | 57.2 | Not benchmarked |
| Independent measurements behind it | 4 | 0 |
| Cost per solved task | $1.56 | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Sonar for coding?
Only Claude Opus 4.6 has a coding score, 57.2 on the Vibe Coding Index; Sonar has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Sonar has the edge where output tokens cost 25.0x less.
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.6 or Sonar?
Claude Opus 4.6 costs $5.00 per million input tokens and $25.00 per million output tokens; Sonar costs $1.00 and $1.00. Cost per solved task is known for Claude Opus 4.6 only.
Which has the bigger context window, Claude Opus 4.6 or Sonar?
Claude Opus 4.6, with 1M tokens against 127K.
How many benchmarks is the Claude Opus 4.6 vs Sonar comparison based on?
3 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. Claude Opus 4.6's coding index rests on 4 independent benchmarks and Sonar's on 0. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.