Claude Opus 4.8 vs Claude Sonnet 4.6
Benchmarks, API pricing and specs, head to head. Data updated 2026-06-10.
Claude Opus 4.8
Anthropic · May 2026
Anthropic's flagship Opus with adaptive thinking, effort controls and a 1M context — 88.6% on SWE-bench Verified at $5/$25.
Claude Sonnet 4.6
Anthropic · Apr 2026
Anthropic's mid-tier workhorse: near-Opus capability at $3/$15, and the leader on the Finance Agent benchmark.
The verdict
Claude Opus 4.8 wins 1 of the 1 benchmarks these models share, against 0 for Claude Sonnet 4.6. Claude Sonnet 4.6 is about 1.7x cheaper per blended million tokens (3:1 input:output mix).
Benchmark head-to-head 1–0
Specs & pricing
| Claude Opus 4.8 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | |
|---|---|---|
| modhub Index | — | — |
| Input price / 1M | $5 | $3 |
| Output price / 1M | $25 | $15 |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Max output | 64K | 64K |
| Open weights | no | no |
| Reasoning model | yes | yes |
| Multimodal input | text, image | text, image |
| Knowledge cutoff | Mar 2026 | Jan 2026 |
| Released | May 2026 | Apr 2026 |
| Example monthly cost* | $87.50 | $52.50 |
* 10M input + 1.5M output tokens per month at list prices, no caching. Green = better value on that row.
Frequently asked questions
- Which is better, Claude Opus 4.8 or Claude Sonnet 4.6?
- Claude Opus 4.8 wins 1 of the 1 benchmarks these models share, against 0 for Claude Sonnet 4.6. Claude Sonnet 4.6 is about 1.7x cheaper per blended million tokens (3:1 input:output mix).
- Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.8 or Claude Sonnet 4.6?
- Claude Opus 4.8 costs $5/$25 per million input/output tokens, while Claude Sonnet 4.6 costs $3/$15. For a typical workload of 10M input and 1.5M output tokens per month, that's $87.50 versus $52.50.
- Which model is better for coding, Claude Opus 4.8 or Claude Sonnet 4.6?
- On SWE-bench Verified — the standard agentic-coding benchmark — Claude Opus 4.8 scores 88.6% versus ~79.6% for Claude Sonnet 4.6, making Claude Opus 4.8 the stronger pick for coding agents.
More comparisons
Claude Opus 4.8 vs GPT-5.5Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs GPT-5.5Claude Opus 4.8 vs GPT-5.2Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs GPT-5.2Claude Opus 4.8 vs GPT-5.1Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs GPT-5.1Claude Opus 4.8 vs GPT-5Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs GPT-5Claude Opus 4.8 vs GPT-5 miniClaude Sonnet 4.6 vs GPT-5 miniClaude Opus 4.8 vs OpenAI o3Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs OpenAI o3