Model comparison

Claude 3 Opus vs Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 29.5 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 31 shared benchmarks.

Claude 3 Opus Anthropic

29.5

Rank #310 Confirmed

Claude Opus 4.6 Anthropic

58.2

Rank #20 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 31 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude 3 Opus scores higher in 0 categories and Claude Opus 4.6 in 10 categories; 10 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where Claude Opus 4.6 leads 63.0 to 14.8.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 4.7% for Claude 3 Opus and 94.4% for Claude Opus 4.6.

Side by side

Claude 3 Opus and Claude Opus 4.6 specifications
Claude 3 OpusClaude Opus 4.6
ProviderAnthropicAnthropic
Noometry Index29.558.2
Released2024-02-292026-02-04
WeightsProprietaryProprietary
Context window—1M
Max output—128K
Input $ / M tokens—$5
Output $ / M tokens—$25
Results tracked4668

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Category by category

Coding Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude 3 Opus: 32.9 (#267), Claude Opus 4.6: 57.2 (#20)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3 OpusClaude Opus 4.6
WeirdML19.2%78%
LMArena Coding12641536
SWE-bench Verified—78.7%
FrontierCode—26.6%
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)—75.6%
LMArena WebDev—1547
SWE-bench Multilingual—72%
GSO—41.2%
BigCodeBench Instruct45.5%—
LiveBench Coding38.6%—
BigCodeBench Complete57.4%—
ALE-Bench—996.5
AlgoTune—1.47
HumanEval+77.4%—
MBPP+73.3%—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude 3 Opus: 24.6 (#116), Claude Opus 4.6: 51.1 (#4)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3 OpusClaude Opus 4.6
Cybench10%93%
METR Time Horizons29.5%78.9%
Terminal-Bench—79.8%
APEX-Agents—46.3%
Remote Labor Index—4.2%
τ²-bench Banking—27.3%
DeepResearch Bench—55.3%
GBAEval—44.1%
LMArena Search—1253
Vending-Bench 2—8,018

Reasoning Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude 3 Opus: 14.6 (#324), Claude Opus 4.6: 57.8 (#23)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3 OpusClaude Opus 4.6
SimpleBench23.5%67.6%
Chess Puzzles5%17%
EnigmaEval0.8%7.6%
LMArena Hard Prompts12451527
DTBench61.6%91.2%
LMCA17%55.8%
Epoch Capabilities Index126.91155.24
ForecastBench58.460
ARC-AGI-2—69.2%
Kagi LLM Benchmark—83.6%
NYT Connections (extended)—92.1%
ARC-AGI-1—94%
Thematic Generalization—80.6%
EBR-Bench—12.7%
LiveBench Reasoning40.6%—
Mystery Game Puzzles—25%
LiveBench Data Analysis57.9%—
LiveBench49.2%—
WinoGrande88.5%—

Math Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude 3 Opus: 14.8 (#299), Claude Opus 4.6: 63.0 (#31)

Knowledge Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude 3 Opus: 24.5 (#267), Claude Opus 4.6: 61.9 (#26)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3 OpusClaude Opus 4.6
GPQA Diamond47.2%90.5%
SimpleQA Verified12.6%47%
LMArena Expert12231546
Humanity's Last Exam—34.4%
Confabulations22.7%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate—12.2%
MMLU84.6%—

Multimodal Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude 3 Opus: 27.1 (#116), Claude Opus 4.6: 37.3 (#74)

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3 OpusClaude Opus 4.6
LMArena Vision10231316
Furniture Assembly—28.3%
LMArena Document—1507

Multilingual Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude 3 Opus: 41.4 (#207), Claude Opus 4.6: 57.9 (#6)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3 OpusClaude Opus 4.6
LMArena Non-English12581489
LMArena Chinese12481551
LMArena French12751513
LMArena German12581502
LMArena Japanese12041484
LMArena Korean11871464
LMArena Russian12801497
LMArena Spanish12461510

Instruction Following Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude 3 Opus: 64.1 (#228), Claude Opus 4.6: 79.5 (#4)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3 OpusClaude Opus 4.6
LMArena Instruction Following12481523
LiveBench Instruction Following63.9%—

Long Context Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude 3 Opus: 38.2 (#202), Claude Opus 4.6: 48.1 (#13)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3 OpusClaude Opus 4.6
LMArena Longer Query12591520
CL-bench—20.7%
CL-bench Life—17%

Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude 3 Opus: 47.2 (#213), Claude Opus 4.6: 73.5 (#10)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3 OpusClaude Opus 4.6
LMArena Text12621503
LMArena Creative Writing12351505
LMArena Multi-Turn12751513
EQ-Bench Creative Writing—1809
EQ-Bench 4—1223
LiveBench Language50.4%—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude 3 Opus better than Claude Opus 4.6?

Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 29.5 on the Noometry Index.

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

Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 57.2 versus 32.9 in the Noometry coding category.

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

31 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude 3 Opus has 46 scored results on Noometry and Claude Opus 4.6 has 68.

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