Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05) vs Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05) vs Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29): Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29) is cheaper by 40% on average. Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05) from Anthropic (1,000,000-token context, reasoning, tool calls) vs. Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29) from Anthropic (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
01,000,000
400
0128,000
5,000
01,000,000
At this workload, Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29) is 40% cheaper than Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05) — a savings of $1,522/month ($18,263/year).
Production recipe — Agent Command Center
strategy: cost-optimized
primary:
model: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929
provider: anthropic
fallback:
model: claude-opus-4-6-20260205
provider: anthropic
shadow: { sample_rate: 0.05 } # mirror 5% of traffic to compare quality live| Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05) | Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29) | |
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $5.00/M | $3.00/M |
| Output price | $25.00/M | $15.00/M |
| Context window | 1,000,000 | 200,000 |
| Max output | 128,000 | 64,000 |
| Function calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio input | — | — |
| Reasoning | ✓ | ✓ |
| Prompt caching | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structured output | ✓ | ✓ |
| Pricing verified | May 12, 2026 | May 12, 2026 |
Benchmark comparison
Side-by-side public benchmark scores. Greener bar = winner.
Chatbot Arena ELOgeneral
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
1,498
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
1,454
AIME 2025math
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
—
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
100.0%
HumanEvalcode
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
—
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
93.7%
MATH-500math
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
—
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
88.0%
IFEvalgeneral
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
—
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
87.6%
MMLU-Proreasoning
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
—
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
87.4%
BFCL v3agent
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
—
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
85.7%
GPQA Diamondreasoning
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
—
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
84.4%
SWE-bench Verifiedagent
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
—
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
82.0%
AIME 2024math
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
—
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
79.6%
Aider Polyglotcode
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
—
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
77.8%
MMMUmultimodal
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
—
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
77.6%
τ-bench (retail)agent
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
—
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
75.4%
LiveCodeBenchcode
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
—
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
67.4%
τ-bench (airline)agent
Claude Opus 4.6 (2026-02-05)
—
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
55.0%