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Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Sonnet 4

2 vs 0 benchmarks won

Anthropic
Claude Opus 4.6
Anthropic
Claude Sonnet 4
Overview
CompanyAnthropicAnthropic
Release dateFeb 5 2026May 22 2025
Model type
Open sourceNoNo
Specifications
Parameters
Context window
Benchmarks
Science reasoning
GPQA Diamond
91.3%
75.4%
Software engineering
SWE-Bench Verified
80.8%
72.7%
Multimodal understanding
MMMU
Timeline
Release gapClaude Sonnet 4 shipped 259 days before Claude Opus 4.6

Which is better: Claude Opus 4.6 or Claude Sonnet 4?

Claude Opus 4.6 leads Claude Sonnet 4 on 2 of the tracked benchmarks (GPQA Diamond, SWE-Bench Verified, MMMU). Claude Sonnet 4 shipped 259 days before Claude Opus 4.6, so benchmark comparisons should account for the intervening progress.

Published specifications for these two models are limited — see each model page for the latest details.

On GPQA Diamond, Claude Opus 4.6 scores 91.3%, 15.9 points above Claude Sonnet 4 at 75.4%. On SWE-Bench Verified, Claude Opus 4.6 scores 80.8%, 8.1 points above Claude Sonnet 4 at 72.7%.

Frequently asked questions

When was Claude Opus 4.6 released?
Claude Opus 4.6 was released by Anthropic on Feb 5 2026.
When was Claude Sonnet 4 released?
Claude Sonnet 4 was released by Anthropic on May 22 2025.
Which is better on GPQA Diamond, Claude Opus 4.6 or Claude Sonnet 4?
Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher on GPQA Diamond — Claude Opus 4.6 91.3% vs Claude Sonnet 4 75.4%.
Which is better at coding, Claude Opus 4.6 or Claude Sonnet 4?
On SWE-Bench Verified (real-world software-engineering tasks), Claude Opus 4.6 leads — Claude Opus 4.6 scores 80.8% and Claude Sonnet 4 scores 72.7%.

Other comparisons