# Claude Opus 4.6: pricing, crowd verdict, pros and cons (2026)

> Anthropic's Feb 2026 Opus: 1M context, adaptive thinking, 80.8% SWE-bench, now superseded by Opus 4.8.

Source: [GLAD-AI-TOR](https://glad-ia-tor.com) · Full page: https://glad-ia-tor.com/tool/claude-opus-4-6
Arena: llm-models · Crowd score: 50% recommend (0 votes, Bayesian-smoothed) · Price: $25/1M out

Frontier Opus-class model released February 5, 2026. First Opus with a 1M-token context window, adaptive thinking, and an effort parameter (low to max). Posted 80.8% on SWE-bench Verified and the top Terminal-Bench 2.0 score at launch; later superseded by Opus 4.7 and 4.8 at identical pricing.

## Key facts

- provider: Anthropic
- contextWindow: 1M tokens (128K max output)
- priceIn: $5/1M in
- priceOut: $25/1M out
- modalities: text, vision (image input), text output
- openWeights: no

## Ratings (editorial, 1-5)

- reasoning: 4/5
- coding: 4/5
- writing: 4/5
- speed: 2.5/5
- valueForMoney: 3/5

## Pros

- 80.8% SWE-bench Verified (25-trial average) and top Terminal-Bench 2.0 score at launch, the leading agentic coding model of its generation (Feb 2026)
- First Opus with a 1M-token context window: 76% on MRCR v2 8-needle at 1M tokens vs 18.5% for Sonnet 4.5
- Large reasoning jump over Opus 4.5: ARC-AGI-2 68.8% vs 37.6%, +190 Elo on GDPval-AA economic-value tasks (~144 Elo over GPT-5.2)
- Kept Opus 4.5 pricing ($5/$25 per 1M tokens) despite the gains; full 1M context now billed at standard rates, 50% batch discount
- Adaptive thinking plus effort parameter (low/medium/high/max) to trade intelligence, latency and cost per request
- Strong autonomous agent behavior: parallelizes work and needs less handholding than Opus 4.5 (Every.to Vibe Check)

## Cons

- Slower and more verbose than Opus 4.5; reviewers report the pace 'wavers under load' on long agentic runs (Every.to)
- Writing regressed: in blind tests Every.to's team preferred Opus 4.5's prose, and 4.6 shows more AI-isms like 'X not Y' constructions
- Sometimes makes unexpected changes and 'doesn't always know its own skills', requiring closer supervision than GPT-5.x Codex per reviewers
- Superseded within months by Opus 4.7 and 4.8 at the same $5/$25 price, and fast mode is not available on 4.6 since June 2026 (requests run at standard speed)
- Some devs report benchmark fatigue: day-to-day coding gains over 4.5 are harder to feel than the scores suggest, and SWE-bench itself was flat vs 4.5 (80.8% vs 80.9%)

## Best for

- agentic coding
- long-context analysis
- multi-step agent workflows
- large-codebase refactoring

## Verdict

A clear upgrade over Opus 4.5 for agentic coding and long-context work at identical pricing, and it held the top agentic coding benchmarks at launch. In mid-2026 however there is little reason to start new projects on it: Opus 4.8 costs the same $5/$25 and outperforms it across the board, so pick 4.6 mainly to pin an already-validated behavior. Writers should avoid it, since blind tests preferred Opus 4.5's prose, and latency-sensitive users should note it is slower than 4.5 with no fast mode option.

## Pricing note

Standard tier $5/$25 per 1M tokens; full 1M context now at standard rates (the launch-time premium of $10/$37.50 above 200K tokens was later dropped), batch API 50% off ($2.50/$12.50), US-only inference (inference_geo) 1.1x multiplier.

## Alternatives and head-to-heads

- [Claude Haiku 4.5](https://glad-ia-tor.com/tool/claude-haiku-4-5) (crowd score 67%) · [Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Haiku 4.5](https://glad-ia-tor.com/vs/claude-opus-4-6-vs-claude-haiku-4-5)
- [Claude Fable 5](https://glad-ia-tor.com/tool/claude-fable-5) (crowd score 63%) · [Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Fable 5](https://glad-ia-tor.com/vs/claude-opus-4-6-vs-claude-fable-5)
- [Claude Opus 4.7](https://glad-ia-tor.com/tool/claude-opus-4-7) (crowd score 57%) · [Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Opus 4.7](https://glad-ia-tor.com/vs/claude-opus-4-6-vs-claude-opus-4-7)
- [Claude Sonnet 5](https://glad-ia-tor.com/tool/claude-sonnet-5) (crowd score 57%) · [Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Sonnet 5](https://glad-ia-tor.com/vs/claude-opus-4-6-vs-claude-sonnet-5)

Full ranking: https://glad-ia-tor.com/hall-of-fame/llm-models

---
Rankings are computed live from real visitor verdicts (one per person per tool, never paid).
This markdown version exists for AI assistants; the canonical page is https://glad-ia-tor.com/tool/claude-opus-4-6