Home / Claude Opus vs Claude Sonnet: Which AI Model to Choose in 2026?
Anthropic
$5 - $25/million tokens API, $20-$200/month subscriptionAnthropic
$3 - $15/million tokens API, $20/month subscriptionClaude Opus 4.6 costs $5/$25 per million tokens while Sonnet 4.6 costs $3/$15, with only a 1.2-point gap on coding benchmarks but negligible differences for practical work. However, Opus dominates scientific reasoning with a 17.2-point advantage (91.3% vs 74.1% on GPQA Diamond).
AI Verdict
Sonnet 4.6 delivers 98% of Opus's coding performance at one-fifth the cost, making it the smart default for most users.
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Score Overview
Score comparison
Strengths & Weaknesses
Claude Opus 4.6
Anthropic · $5 - $25/million tokens API, $20-$200/month subscription
Strengths
+17-point lead in scientific reasoning
+Agent Teams for parallel workflows
+128K output token limit (2x Sonnet)
+1M token context window
Weaknesses
−5x more expensive than Sonnet
−Slower response times
−Overkill for simple tasks
Claude Sonnet 4.6
Anthropic · $3 - $15/million tokens API, $20/month subscription
Strengths
+5x cheaper than Opus
+Faster response times
+Near-identical coding performance
+1M token context window
Weaknesses
−17-point gap in scientific reasoning
−No Agent Teams feature
−64K output limit vs 128K for Opus
Detailed Analysis
Sonnet 4.6 scores 79.6% on SWE-bench Verified vs Opus's 80.8%, a 1.2-point gap that's negligible for practical coding work. Developers preferred Sonnet 4.6 over the previous flagship Opus 4.5 59% of the time, citing better instruction following and less overengineering.
GPQA Diamond tests PhD-level science reasoning, where Opus 4.6 scores 91.3% vs Sonnet's 74.1% - the largest performance difference between the models. For advanced scientific reasoning and research analysis, Opus operates at a fundamentally different level.
For companies processing 10 million tokens per day, Sonnet costs $180,000 annually versus Opus at $900,000 - a $720,000 difference. At 1,000 daily requests on typical coding tasks, Sonnet costs $180/day vs Opus's $900/day.
Sonnet 4.6 is optimized for low latency and quick responses, whereas Opus operates with slower response times due to its larger, more complex architecture. Sonnet delivers 40-60 tokens/second, ideal for routine coding.
Agent Teams is exclusive to Opus 4.6, allowing multiple Claude instances to work on different project parts simultaneously. Opus supports 128K max output vs Sonnet's 64K ceiling, enabling larger single-response artifacts.
For practical coding work like bug fixes and feature implementation, the 1.2-point gap is negligible. Default to Sonnet 4.6 and escalate to Opus only when deep reasoning is required.
Opus costs $5/$25 per million tokens vs Sonnet's $3/$15. A typical request costs $0.068 with Opus versus $0.014 with Sonnet - a 5x multiplier that becomes significant at enterprise scale.
Opus justifies its premium for expert-level science, multi-agent Agent Teams, large codebase refactoring, and security audits where deepest analysis matters. In regulatory applications where wrong answers have legal liability, the additional reasoning depth provides rational insurance.
Claude Pro at $20/month includes access to both Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6, with usage limits on Opus. For heavier Opus usage, consider Max 5x ($100/month) or Max 20x ($200/month) plans.
This comparison was generated using AI-powered analysis of the latest specifications, reviews, and pricing data available on the web. Last updated: March 30, 2026. Results are for informational purposes — verify details before purchasing. Learn about our methodology
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