Model comparison
Claude 2.1 vs Claude Opus 4.8
Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 24.9 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 6 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 6 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude 2.1 scores higher in 0 categories and Claude Opus 4.8 in 4 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Claude Opus 4.8 leads 78.2 to 9.6.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 1.9% for Claude 2.1 and 98.3% for Claude Opus 4.8.
Side by side
| Claude 2.1 | Claude Opus 4.8 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Noometry Index | 24.9 | 60.7 |
| Released | 2023-11-21 | 2026-05-28 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | — | 1M |
| Max output | — | 128K |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | $5 |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | $25 |
| Results tracked | 7 | 65 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude 2.1: 25.8 (#322), Claude Opus 4.8: 60.2 (#9)
| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude Opus 4.8 |
|---|---|---|
| WeirdML | 7.1% | 82.9% |
| DeepSWE | — | 59% |
| FrontierCode | — | 46.5% |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1556 |
| SciCode | — | 53.5% |
| GSO | — | 47.1% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1491 |
| ALE-Bench | — | 1,564 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Claude 2.1: —, Claude Opus 4.8: 47.6 (#10)
| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude Opus 4.8 |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | — | 48.9% |
| OSWorld 2.0 | — | 20.6% |
| Remote Labor Index | — | 8.3% |
| τ²-bench Banking | — | 39.7% |
| DeepResearch Bench | — | 50.2% |
| PostTrainBench | — | 33.8% |
| GBAEval | — | 70.9% |
| GDP.pdf | — | 24% |
| LMArena Search | — | 1204 |
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 5,787 |
Reasoning Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude 2.1: 20.6 (#216), Claude Opus 4.8: 64.6 (#14)
| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude Opus 4.8 |
|---|---|---|
| DTBench | 51% | 94.9% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 119.22 | 158.3 |
| ForecastBench | 54.2 | 59.9 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 72.1% |
| SimpleBench | — | 64.8% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 88.8% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 91.1% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 92.5% |
| CritPt | — | 20.9% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 34% |
| EnigmaEval | — | 23.5% |
| EBR-Bench | — | 28.6% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1481 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 36% |
| LMCA | — | 57.5% |
| Surface Evolver Bench | — | 87.5% |
| Bench to the Future 3 | — | 0.14 |
Math Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude 2.1: 9.6 (#309), Claude Opus 4.8: 78.2 (#11)
| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude Opus 4.8 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 1.9% | 98.3% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 80% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 56.1% |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 91.8% |
| ProofBench | — | 69% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1487 |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 47.2% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 31.3% |
Knowledge Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude 2.1: 15.5 (#287), Claude Opus 4.8: 61.3 (#26)
| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude Opus 4.8 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 33% | 91% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 53% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1501 |
| MMLU | 73.5% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude 2.1: —, Claude Opus 4.8: 43.2 (#20)
| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude Opus 4.8 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1295 |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | — | 14.5% |
| Furniture Assembly | — | 42.5% |
| LMArena Document | — | 1475 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Claude 2.1: —, Claude Opus 4.8: 55.4 (#31)
| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude Opus 4.8 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1450 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1509 |
| LMArena French | — | 1482 |
| LMArena German | — | 1470 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1440 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1432 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1476 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1470 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Claude 2.1: —, Claude Opus 4.8: 77.6 (#22)
| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude Opus 4.8 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1476 |
Long Context Not comparable
Claude 2.1: —, Claude Opus 4.8: 45.4 (#37)
| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude Opus 4.8 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1482 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Claude 2.1: —, Claude Opus 4.8: 72.1 (#17)
| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude Opus 4.8 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1460 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1453 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1840 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | — | 1281 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1476 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude 2.1 better than Claude Opus 4.8?
Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 24.9 on the Noometry Index.
Is Claude 2.1 or Claude Opus 4.8 better for coding?
Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 60.2 versus 25.8 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Claude 2.1 and Claude Opus 4.8 share?
6 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude 2.1 has 7 scored results on Noometry and Claude Opus 4.8 has 65.