Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29) vs Claude Opus 4.6

Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29) vs Claude Opus 4.6: Claude Opus 4.6 is cheaper by 67% on average. Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29) from Anthropic (200,000-token context, tool calls) vs. Claude Opus 4.6 from Azure AI Foundry (200,000-token context, reasoning, tool calls). Use Agent Command Center to A/B both in shadow mode and pick the winner per workload.

Side-by-side cost

Live workload comparison

Same workload run through both models. The cheaper one is highlighted.

3,000
0200,000
400
0128,000
5,000
01,000,000
Anthropic
$11,414/mo
Input $15.00/M · Output $75.00/M
Azure AI Foundry
$3,805/mo
Input $5.00/M · Output $25.00/M
At this workload, Claude Opus 4.6 is 67% cheaper than Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29) — a savings of $7,609/month ($91,313/year).
Production recipe — Agent Command Center
strategy: cost-optimized
primary:
  model: claude-opus-4-6
  provider: azure-ai-foundry
fallback:
  model: claude-3-opus-20240229
  provider: anthropic
shadow: { sample_rate: 0.05 }   # mirror 5% of traffic to compare quality live
Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29) Claude Opus 4.6
Input price $15.00/M $5.00/M
Output price $75.00/M $25.00/M
Context window 200,000 200,000
Max output 4,096 128,000
Function calling
Vision
Audio input
Reasoning
Prompt caching
Structured output
Pricing verified May 12, 2026 May 12, 2026
Cheaper option
~67% cheaper than Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29)
Larger context
200,000 tokens
More capabilities
5 of 6 capability flags advertised

Benchmark comparison

Side-by-side public benchmark scores. Greener bar = winner.

Chatbot Arena ELOgeneral
Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29)
1,248
Claude Opus 4.6
1,502
τ-bench (retail)agent
Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29)
Claude Opus 4.6
91.9%
GPQA Diamondreasoning
Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29)
Claude Opus 4.6
91.3%
MMLUgeneral
Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29)
86.8%
Claude Opus 4.6
91.1%
HumanEvalcode
Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29)
84.9%
Claude Opus 4.6
SWE-bench Verifiedagent
Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29)
Claude Opus 4.6
81.4%
MMMU-Promultimodal
Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29)
Claude Opus 4.6
73.9%
ARC-AGI-2reasoning
Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29)
Claude Opus 4.6
68.8%
MMMUmultimodal
Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29)
59.4%
Claude Opus 4.6
Humanity's Last Examreasoning
Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29)
Claude Opus 4.6
53.0%
GPQAreasoning
Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29)
50.4%
Claude Opus 4.6