Model comparison

Claude 3 Opus vs Claude Sonnet 4.6

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 29.5 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 27 shared benchmarks.

Claude 3 Opus Anthropic

29.5

Rank #310 Confirmed

Claude Sonnet 4.6 Anthropic

50.3

Rank #50 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 27 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude 3 Opus scores higher in 0 categories and Claude Sonnet 4.6 in 10 categories; 10 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads 52.9 to 14.8.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 4.7% for Claude 3 Opus and 85.8% for Claude Sonnet 4.6.

Side by side

Claude 3 Opus and Claude Sonnet 4.6 specifications
Claude 3 OpusClaude Sonnet 4.6
ProviderAnthropicAnthropic
Noometry Index29.550.3
Released2024-02-292026-02-17
WeightsProprietaryProprietary
Context window—1M
Max output—128K
Input $ / M tokens—$3
Output $ / M tokens—$15
Results tracked4657

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude 3 Opus: 32.9 (#267), Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.3 (#67)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3 OpusClaude Sonnet 4.6
WeirdML19.2%66.1%
LMArena Coding12641504
SWE-bench Verified—75.2%
DeepSWE—29.9%
FrontierCode—24.3%
LMArena WebDev—1522
SciCode—46.8%
BigCodeBench Instruct45.5%—
LiveBench Coding38.6%—
BigCodeBench Complete57.4%—
ALE-Bench—1,327
HumanEval+77.4%—
MBPP+73.3%—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude 3 Opus: 24.6 (#116), Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#28)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3 OpusClaude Sonnet 4.6
Terminal-Bench—53.4%
APEX-Agents—43%
OSWorld 2.0—9.3%
Cybench10%—
DeepResearch Bench—54.9%
OSWorld—72.1%
ExploitBench—23.6%
GBAEval—48.8%
GDP.pdf—18%
LMArena Search—1221
METR Time Horizons29.5%—
Vending-Bench 2—7,204

Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude 3 Opus: 14.6 (#324), Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.1 (#45)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3 OpusClaude Sonnet 4.6
Chess Puzzles5%13%
LMArena Hard Prompts12451484
DTBench61.6%89.9%
LMCA17%46.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index126.91152.24
ForecastBench58.462
ARC-AGI-2—60.4%
SimpleBench23.5%—
NYT Connections (extended)—80.9%
ARC-AGI-1—86.5%
CritPt—3.1%
EnigmaEval0.8%—
Thematic Generalization—76.3%
LiveBench Reasoning40.6%—
Mystery Game Puzzles—16%
LiveBench Data Analysis57.9%—
LiveBench49.2%—
WinoGrande88.5%—

Math Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude 3 Opus: 14.8 (#299), Claude Sonnet 4.6: 52.9 (#49)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3 OpusClaude Sonnet 4.6
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-20254.7%85.8%
LMArena Math12731462
ProofBench—45%
LiveBench Math43.6%—
MATH Level 537.5%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)—32.4%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)—8.3%

Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude 3 Opus: 24.5 (#267), Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.7 (#65)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3 OpusClaude Sonnet 4.6
GPQA Diamond47.2%87.4%
SimpleQA Verified12.6%35.5%
LMArena Expert12231500
Confabulations22.7%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate—10.6%
MMLU84.6%—

Multimodal Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude 3 Opus: 27.1 (#116), Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#68)

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3 OpusClaude Sonnet 4.6
LMArena Vision10231283
Blueprint-Bench 2—6.7%
LMArena Document—1482

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude 3 Opus: 41.4 (#207), Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.4 (#41)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3 OpusClaude Sonnet 4.6
LMArena Non-English12581440
LMArena Chinese12481491
LMArena French12751465
LMArena German12581428
LMArena Japanese12041420
LMArena Korean11871411
LMArena Russian12801440
LMArena Spanish12461464

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude 3 Opus: 64.1 (#228), Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.4 (#25)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3 OpusClaude Sonnet 4.6
LMArena Instruction Following12481475
LiveBench Instruction Following63.9%—

Long Context Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude 3 Opus: 38.2 (#202), Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#44)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3 OpusClaude Sonnet 4.6
LMArena Longer Query12591479

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude 3 Opus: 47.2 (#213), Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.2 (#22)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3 OpusClaude Sonnet 4.6
LMArena Text12621458
LMArena Creative Writing12351435
LMArena Multi-Turn12751464
EQ-Bench Creative Writing—1810
EQ-Bench 4—1207
LiveBench Language50.4%—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude 3 Opus better than Claude Sonnet 4.6?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 29.5 on the Noometry Index.

Is Claude 3 Opus or Claude Sonnet 4.6 better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.3 versus 32.9 in the Noometry coding category.

How many benchmarks do Claude 3 Opus and Claude Sonnet 4.6 share?

27 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude 3 Opus has 46 scored results on Noometry and Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57.

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