Claude Opus 4.8 vs Claude Sonnet 4.6
2026 - Pricing, benchmarks, and use case comparison
Quick take
- •Claude Sonnet 4.6 is 80% cheaper on input tokens - better for high-volume workloads.
- •Both models come from Anthropic. Claude Opus 4.8 targets higher capability; Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the faster, cheaper tier.
Specs comparison
| Claude Opus 4.8 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Type | Closed source | Closed source |
| Context window | 200K | 200K |
| Input / 1M tokens | $15.00 | ✓$3.00 |
| Output / 1M tokens | $75.00 | $15.00 |
| Release date | 2026-05 | 2025-07 |
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified | - | ~49% |
| MMLU | - | ~88% |
| HumanEval | - | ~93% |
Scores sourced from official provider release posts.
Strengths
Claude Opus 4.8
- ✓Best-in-class multi-step reasoning
- ✓Improved instruction following over Opus 4.7
- ✓Reduced refusals on edge-case and nuanced requests
- ✓Superior long-context comprehension at 200K tokens
- ✓Strong scientific and mathematical analysis
Claude Sonnet 4.6
- ✓Strong coding and debugging across most languages
- ✓Excellent at following multi-step instructions
- ✓200K context handles entire codebases
- ✓Fast enough for interactive use cases
- ✓Solid function calling and structured output
Which should you choose?
Choose Claude Opus 4.8 if you need...
- →Complex research and analysis tasks
- →High-stakes code generation
- →Long-document analysis
- →Nuanced reasoning requiring careful judgment
Choose Claude Sonnet 4.6 if you need...
- →Production API integrations
- →Coding assistants and IDEs
- →Document analysis
- →Agentic workflows