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

Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29) vs Claude Sonnet 4.6: Claude Sonnet 4.6 is cheaper by 80% on average. Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29) from Anthropic (200,000-token context, tool calls) vs. Claude Sonnet 4.6 from Azure AI Foundry (1,000,000-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
01,000,000
400
064,000
5,000
01,000,000
Anthropic
$11,414/mo
Input $15.00/M · Output $75.00/M
Azure AI Foundry
$2,283/mo
Input $3.00/M · Output $15.00/M
At this workload, Claude Sonnet 4.6 is 80% cheaper than Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29) — a savings of $9,131/month ($109,575/year).
Production recipe — Agent Command Center
strategy: cost-optimized
primary:
  model: claude-sonnet-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 Sonnet 4.6
Input price $15.00/M $3.00/M
Output price $75.00/M $15.00/M
Context window 200,000 1,000,000
Max output 4,096 64,000
Function calling
Vision
Audio input
Reasoning
Prompt caching
Structured output
Pricing verified May 12, 2026 May 12, 2026
Cheaper option
~80% cheaper than Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29)
Larger context
1,000,000 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 Sonnet 4.6
1,466
τ-bench (retail)agent
Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29)
Claude Sonnet 4.6
91.7%
GPQA Diamondreasoning
Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29)
Claude Sonnet 4.6
89.9%
MMLUgeneral
Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29)
86.8%
Claude Sonnet 4.6
89.3%
HumanEvalcode
Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29)
84.9%
Claude Sonnet 4.6
SWE-bench Verifiedagent
Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29)
Claude Sonnet 4.6
79.6%
MMMU-Promultimodal
Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29)
Claude Sonnet 4.6
74.5%
MMMUmultimodal
Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29)
59.4%
Claude Sonnet 4.6
ARC-AGI-2reasoning
Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29)
Claude Sonnet 4.6
58.3%
GPQAreasoning
Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29)
50.4%
Claude Sonnet 4.6
Humanity's Last Examreasoning
Claude 3 Opus (2024-02-29)
Claude Sonnet 4.6
33.2%