vs
0:2
overall capability wins (0 ties across 2 scored). Claude Opus 4.6 leads overall.
- Pricing3:0
- Speed2:0
- Specs0:2
Verdict
Claude Opus 4.6 offers ~10.0x larger context (1M vs 100K); Claude Opus 4.6 allows ~31.3x more max output (128K vs 4K); Claude Instant 1.2 is ~8.3x cheaper on a blended token basis than Claude Opus 4.6.
- Claude Opus 4.6 offers ~10.0x larger context (1M vs 100K)
- Claude Opus 4.6 allows ~31.3x more max output (128K vs 4K)
- Claude Instant 1.2 is ~8.3x cheaper on a blended token basis than Claude Opus 4.6
Cost for 1M in + 250K out
Illustrative chat workload at primary-provider list prices.
- Claude Instant 1.2
- $1.40
- Claude Opus 4.6
- $11.25
Claude Instant 1.2 is about 8.0x cheaper on this workload.
Price per 1M tokens
Full comparison
Organization
Anthropic
Anthropic
Family
Claude Opus
Claude Opus
License
Proprietary
Proprietary
Open weights
No
No
Release
Aug 9, 2023
Feb 19, 2026
Knowledge cutoff
-
-
API / provider
Anthropic
Anthropic
Modalities
text → text
text, image → text
Specs
Context window
100K
1M
Max output
4K
128K
Parameters
—
—
Pricing
Input $/1M
$0.80
$5
Output $/1M
$2.40
$25
Blended $/1M (3∶1)
$1.20
$10
Speed
tok/s
100
65
TTFT (s)
0.3
0.6
Reasoning
MMLU-Pro
—
—
GPQA Diamond
—
89.6
Humanity's Last Exam
—
39.9
AIME 2025
—
—
MATH-500
—
—
Humanity's Last Exam (with tools)
—
—
AA-Omniscience Accuracy
—
47.0
AA-LCR v1.1
—
78.0
CritPt
—
12.6
MMMU-Pro
—
75.4
IFBench
—
53.1
Chartography
—
—
Chartography (With Tools)
—
—
Coding
SWE-bench Verified
—
75.6
SWE-bench Pro
—
—
SWE-bench Multilingual
—
72.0
LiveCodeBench
—
—
Terminal-Bench 2.1
—
—
Aider Polyglot
—
—
Terminal-Bench 3
—
—
BigCodeBench
—
—
SciCode
—
51.9
CursorBench
—
—
SWE-Rebench
—
53.3
NL2Repo-Bench
—
—
DeepSWE
—
—
WebDev Arena
—
1,537
Terminal-Bench 4.0
—
—
CursorBench 4.0
—
—
FrontierCode v1.1 (Main)
—
—
Arena
LMArena Elo
—
1,497
| Metric | Claude Instant 1.2 | Claude Opus 4.6 | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identity | |||
| Organization | Anthropic | Anthropic | — |
| Family | Claude Opus | Claude Opus | — |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary | — |
| Open weights | No | No | — |
| Release | Aug 9, 2023 | Feb 19, 2026 | — |
| Knowledge cutoff | - | - | — |
| API / provider | Anthropic | Anthropic | — |
| Modalities | text → text | text, image → text | — |
| Specs | |||
| Context window | 100K | 1M | B +900K |
| Max output | 4K | 128K | B +124K |
| Parameters | — | — | — |
| Pricing | |||
| Input $/1M | $0.80 | $5 | A +$4.20 |
| Output $/1M | $2.40 | $25 | A +$22.60 |
| Blended $/1M (3∶1) | $1.20 | $10 | A +$8.80 |
| Speed | |||
| tok/s | 100 | 65 | A +35 |
| TTFT (s) | 0.3 | 0.6 | A +0.30 |
| Reasoning | |||
| MMLU-Pro | — | — | — |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 89.6 | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | — | 39.9 | — |
| AIME 2025 | — | — | — |
| MATH-500 | — | — | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam (with tools) | — | — | — |
| AA-Omniscience Accuracy | — | 47.0 | — |
| AA-LCR v1.1 | — | 78.0 | — |
| CritPt | — | 12.6 | — |
| MMMU-Pro | — | 75.4 | — |
| IFBench | — | 53.1 | — |
| Chartography | — | — | — |
| Chartography (With Tools) | — | — | — |
| Coding | |||
| SWE-bench Verified | — | 75.6 | — |
| SWE-bench Pro | — | — | — |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | — | 72.0 | — |
| LiveCodeBench | — | — | — |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | — | — | — |
| Aider Polyglot | — | — | — |
| Terminal-Bench 3 | — | — | — |
| BigCodeBench | — | — | — |
| SciCode | — | 51.9 | — |
| CursorBench | — | — | — |
| SWE-Rebench | — | 53.3 | — |
| NL2Repo-Bench | — | — | — |
| DeepSWE | — | — | — |
| WebDev Arena | — | 1,537 | — |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 | — | — | — |
| CursorBench 4.0 | — | — | — |
| FrontierCode v1.1 (Main) | — | — | — |
| Arena | |||
| LMArena Elo | — | 1,497 | — |
Claude Instant 1.2
- Context
- 100K / 4K out
- Parameters
- —
- Price
- $0.80 / $2.40
- Speed
- 100 tok/s · 0.3s TTFT
- Modalities
- text → text
- License
- Proprietary
Fast pre-Claude-3 Instant tier (claude-instant-1.2) — cheap high-throughput chat and classification at 100K context.
Claude Opus 4.6
- Context
- 1M / 128K out
- Parameters
- —
- Price
- $5 / $25
- Speed
- 65 tok/s · 0.6s TTFT
- Modalities
- text, image → text
- License
- Proprietary
Mid-stack Opus generation between 4.5 and 4.7 - strong coding and long context.
Benchmark charts
Winner bars are emphasized. Per-benchmark deltas sit above each chart.
These two models have no overlapping published benchmarks in our dataset. Compare specs and pricing instead.