Strong SWE-bench Verified result from the previous Opus generation
1M token context window at standard pricing
Best agentic computer use score at 72.7% on OSWorld
Weaknesses
Premium pricing ($15/$75) makes it expensive for high-volume usage
Sonnet 4.6 is only 1.2 points behind on SWE-bench at 5× lower cost
Real-world use cases
What people actually use Claude Opus 4.6 for.
Reviewing large pull requests spanning 50+ files across a monorepo
Writing and debugging multi-step agentic workflows with tool calls and error recovery
Synthesizing long research documents into structured summaries with 1M context
How Claude Opus 4.6 compares
The nearest models people weigh against it, and what actually separates them.
vs Claude 3.5 Sonnet — Against Claude 3.5 Sonnet (Anthropic), Claude Opus 4.6 runs about 17% cheaper per token, takes 5x the context and answers slower. Which one wins depends on whether context depth or latency is your constraint.
vs Claude 3.7 Sonnet (thinking) — Against Claude 3.7 Sonnet (thinking) (Anthropic), Claude Opus 4.6 costs about 40% more per token and takes 5x the context. Claude 3.7 Sonnet (thinking) is the one to check first if the price difference matters more than the ceiling.
vs Claude Fable 5 — Against Claude Fable 5 (Anthropic), Claude Opus 4.6 runs about 50% cheaper per token. Take Claude Opus 4.6 unless you specifically need what Claude Fable 5 does better.
Price History
Claude Opus 4.6 pricing over time
↓67% since Jun 12
90 data points · tracked daily since Jun 12, 2026
Ready to try it?
Start using Claude Opus 4.6
Agentic coding, complex multi-step reasoning, and deep research. Start free — no card required.
Claude 3.5 Sonnet is Anthropic's mid-cycle flagship model, balancing strong reasoning, coding, and instruction-following with a 200K context window. It sits between Haiku and Opus in Anthropic's lineup, offering near-flagship quality at a lower cost than top-tier models.
Verdict
One of the best models for coding and complex instruction-following, but its premium pricing demands premium use cases.
Quality score
81%
Pricing
$6.00/1M in
$30.00/1M out
Speed
Balanced
3/5 speed
Context
200k tokens
Pricing at $6 input / $30 output per million tokens is significantly higher than GPT-4o ($2.50/$10). Best accessed via Anthropic API or Amazon Bedrock. Claude 3.5 Sonnet (October 2024 version) supersedes the June 2024 release with improved performance.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet with extended thinking enabled — Anthropic's hybrid reasoning model that explicitly deliberates before responding, surfacing its chain-of-thought for complex multi-step problems. It sits between standard Sonnet and full reasoning-only models, balancing depth with practical usability.
Verdict
The most transparent reasoning model on the market — ideal when you need to see and trust the thought process, not just the answer.
Quality score
73%
Pricing
$3.00/1M in
$15.00/1M out
Speed
Deliberate
2/5 speed
Context
200k tokens
Thinking tokens (the internal reasoning trace) count toward output token billing, which can significantly increase costs on complex queries. The thinking budget can often be configured via the API. Best used selectively for tasks that genuinely benefit from deliberation rather than as a default model.
ReasoningExtended ThinkingCodingAgenticAnthropic
Best for
Tackling complex coding challenges, mathematical proofs, and multi-step logical problems where visible reasoning and higher accuracy matter more than speed.
Anthropic's new Mythos-class flagship and the most capable coding model anyone can use — 80.3% SWE-Bench Pro, an 11-point jump over Opus 4.8. 1M context, 128K output, native parallel subagents. Released June 9, 2026.
Verdict
New global #1 — 80.3% SWE-Bench Pro, the most capable model generally available.
Quality score
98%
Pricing
$10.00/1M in
$50.00/1M out
Speed
Deliberate
2/5 speed
Context
1M tokens
Launched June 9, 2026 as the public, Mythos-class release. Available on the Claude API, Microsoft Foundry, and Google Vertex AI. Free for all users until June 22, 2026. Same underlying model as Claude Mythos 5, with safeguards that block specific high-risk cyber responses.
Coding leaderSWE-Bench Pro #1Mythos-classParallel subagentsAgenticLong contextPremiumNew
Best for
The hardest coding tasks, autonomous multi-step agents, and frontier-grade reasoning
Claude Opus 4.6 costs $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens on the API, with cached input at $0.5 per million. A month of 10M input and 2M output tokens runs about $100.00 at list price, before any batch or caching discounts.
What is the context window of Claude Opus 4.6?
Claude Opus 4.6 has a 1M tokens context window, with up to 128k tokens of output per response. That is the total of prompt plus response the model can hold in one request.
What is the knowledge cutoff of Claude Opus 4.6?
Claude Opus 4.6's training data runs through May 31, 2025, and the model was released on February 5, 2026. For anything after that date it needs web search or documents in the prompt.
What is Claude Opus 4.6 best for?
Claude Opus 4.6 is best for agentic coding, complex multi-step reasoning, and deep research. It is a strong fit when that workflow matters more than the tradeoffs around premium pricing and deliberate speed.
When should I avoid Claude Opus 4.6?
You want the current premium coding leader, need lower cost, or are starting a new integration.
What is a cheaper alternative to Claude Opus 4.6?
Claude 3.7 Sonnet (thinking) (Anthropic) at $3.00/1M/1M input against Claude Opus 4.6's $5.00/1M/1M — roughly 40% less per token all in. The most transparent reasoning model on the market — ideal when you need to see and trust the thought process, not just the answer. Compare it first if Claude Opus 4.6's pricing is the thing stopping you.
What is a faster alternative to Claude Opus 4.6?
Claude 3.5 Sonnet — balanced against Claude Opus 4.6's deliberate, with 200k tokens of context. Worth the swap when response time is what your users notice rather than the last few points of reasoning depth.
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