Claude Opus 4.1 (2025-08-05) vs Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)

Claude Opus 4.1 (2025-08-05) vs Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05): Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05) is cheaper by 67% on average. Claude Opus 4.1 (2025-08-05) from Anthropic (200,000-token context, reasoning, tool calls) vs. Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05) from Anthropic (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
0128,000
5,000
01,000,000
Anthropic
$11,414/mo
Input $15.00/M · Output $75.00/M
Anthropic
$3,805/mo
Input $5.00/M · Output $25.00/M
At this workload, Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05) is 67% cheaper than Claude Opus 4.1 (2025-08-05) — a savings of $7,609/month ($91,313/year).
Production recipe — Agent Command Center
strategy: cost-optimized
primary:
  model: claude-opus-4-6-20260205
  provider: anthropic
fallback:
  model: claude-opus-4-1-20250805
  provider: anthropic
shadow: { sample_rate: 0.05 }   # mirror 5% of traffic to compare quality live
Claude Opus 4.1 (2025-08-05) Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
Input price $15.00/M $5.00/M
Output price $75.00/M $25.00/M
Context window 200,000 1,000,000
Max output 32,000 128,000
Function calling
Vision
Audio input
Reasoning
Prompt caching
Structured output
Pricing verified May 12, 2026 May 12, 2026
Cheaper option
~67% cheaper than Claude Opus 4.1 (2025-08-05)
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 Opus 4.1 (2025-08-05)
1,447
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
1,498
HumanEvalcode
Claude Opus 4.1 (2025-08-05)
92.4%
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
IFEvalgeneral
Claude Opus 4.1 (2025-08-05)
89.1%
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
MMLU-Proreasoning
Claude Opus 4.1 (2025-08-05)
87.0%
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
BFCL v3agent
Claude Opus 4.1 (2025-08-05)
86.3%
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
GPQA Diamondreasoning
Claude Opus 4.1 (2025-08-05)
79.6%
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
MMMUmultimodal
Claude Opus 4.1 (2025-08-05)
79.1%
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
SWE-bench Verifiedagent
Claude Opus 4.1 (2025-08-05)
74.5%
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)