# Claude 2.1 vs Claude 3 Opus

> Claude 3 Opus is the stronger model overall, scoring 29.3 to 24.9 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-2-1-vs-claude-3-opus
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 7

## Summary

- They share 7 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude 2.1 scores higher in 1 category and Claude 3 Opus in 3 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Claude 3 Opus leads 24.5 to 15.5.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 33% for Claude 2.1 and 47.2% for Claude 3 Opus.

## Snapshot

| | Claude 2.1 | Claude 3 Opus |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Noometry Index | 24.9 | 29.3 |
| Rank | 340 | 300 |
| Context | — | — |
| Input $/M | — | — |
| Output $/M | — | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Claude 2.1: 25.8 (#322)
- Claude 3 Opus: 32.4 (#261)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude 3 Opus |
|---|---|---|
| WeirdML | 7.1% | 19.2% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 45.5% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 38.6% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1264 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 57.4% |
| HumanEval+ | — | 77.4% |
| MBPP+ | — | 73.3% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude 2.1: —
- Claude 3 Opus: 24.3 (#110)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude 3 Opus |
|---|---|---|
| Cybench | — | 10% |
| METR Time Horizons | — | 29.5% |

## Reasoning

- Claude 2.1: 20.6 (#216)
- Claude 3 Opus: 14.2 (#318)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude 3 Opus |
|---|---|---|
| DTBench | 51% | 61.6% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 119.22 | 126.91 |
| ForecastBench | 54.2 | 58.4 |
| SimpleBench | — | 23.5% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 5% |
| EnigmaEval | — | 0.8% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 40.6% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1246 |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 57.9% |
| LMCA | — | 17% |
| LiveBench | — | 49.2% |
| WinoGrande | — | 88.5% |

## Math

- Claude 2.1: 9.6 (#309)
- Claude 3 Opus: 13.9 (#293)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude 3 Opus |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 1.9% | 4.7% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 43.6% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1273 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 37.5% |

## Knowledge

- Claude 2.1: 15.5 (#287)
- Claude 3 Opus: 24.5 (#262)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude 3 Opus |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 33% | 47.2% |
| MMLU | 73.5% | 84.6% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 12.6% |
| Confabulations | — | 22.7% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1223 |

## Multimodal

- Claude 2.1: —
- Claude 3 Opus: 26.6 (#112)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude 3 Opus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1023 |

## Multilingual

- Claude 2.1: —
- Claude 3 Opus: 41.6 (#202)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude 3 Opus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1258 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1248 |
| LMArena French | — | 1274 |
| LMArena German | — | 1258 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1204 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1187 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1280 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1246 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude 2.1: —
- Claude 3 Opus: 64.3 (#223)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude 3 Opus |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 63.9% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1248 |

## Long Context

- Claude 2.1: —
- Claude 3 Opus: 38.2 (#197)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude 3 Opus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1259 |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude 2.1: —
- Claude 3 Opus: 47.4 (#208)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude 3 Opus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1262 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1235 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1275 |
| LiveBench Language | — | 50.4% |

## FAQ

### Is Claude 2.1 better than Claude 3 Opus?

Claude 3 Opus is the stronger model overall, scoring 29.3 to 24.9 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Claude 2.1 or Claude 3 Opus better for coding?

Claude 3 Opus scores higher on coding benchmarks: 32.4 versus 25.8 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Claude 2.1 and Claude 3 Opus share?

7 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude 2.1 has 7 scored results on Noometry and Claude 3 Opus has 46.