Head-to-head
Claude Haiku 4.5 vs Claude Opus 4.5: which AI model wins in 2026?
Claude Haiku 4.5 ($5/1M out) and Claude Opus 4.5 ($25/1M out) are two of the most-used AI models in 2026. Across 2 community votes, Claude Haiku 4.5 leads with 67% approval.
Quick verdict
On Reasoning, pick Claude Opus 4.5: the arena rates it 3.5/5 against 3/5 for Claude Haiku 4.5. On budget, Claude Haiku 4.5 wins: it starts at $5/1M out versus $25/1M out for Claude Opus 4.5.
Line-by-line comparison
Strengths and weaknesses
Claude Haiku 4.5
- 73.3% on SWE-bench Verified, about 90% of Sonnet 4.5's agentic coding at one third of the price
- Fast: more than 2x Sonnet 4 speed per Anthropic, with launch customers reporting 4-5x faster than Sonnet 4.5; ~92-110 output tok/s measured by Artificial Analysis
- Devs report precise, localized code edits that avoid touching irrelevant code, better than GPT-5 mini class in early testing
- Supports both vision input and extended thinking, rare at this price tier at launch
- Well suited as worker model in multi-agent setups (Sonnet/Opus plans, parallel Haiku sub-agents execute)
- Prompt caching reads at $0.10/1M and 50% Batch API discount cut effective cost further
- $5/1M output is pricey for a small model: Gemini Flash and GPT mini tiers undercut it several-fold on output-heavy tasks
- 200K context (vs 1M for Sonnet 5/Opus siblings) and 64K max output limit large-codebase and long-output work
- Mediocre cross-domain reasoning: users report weak results on GPQA, MedQA, MMMU style knowledge tasks
- Throughput varies widely in practice (82-208 tok/s reported) and quality degrades on long 7-8+ minute agentic sessions
- Knowledge cutoff (reliable to Feb 2025) is dated by mid-2026 standards
Claude Opus 4.5
- First model past 80% on SWE-bench Verified (80.9% at launch), beating Gemini 3 Pro and GPT-5.1 on real-world coding
- 66% price cut vs Opus 4.1 ($5/$25 vs $15/$75 per 1M tokens) made Opus-tier viable for production workloads
- 48-76% fewer output tokens than Sonnet 4.5 at matched or better quality, compounding the price cut
- Effort parameter (introduced with this model) lets devs trade reasoning depth for cost and latency per call
- Strong hands-on reports: one-shot complex refactors, caught race conditions other models missed, converged in ~4 agentic iterations vs ~10 for rivals
- +29% on Vending-Bench vs Sonnet 4.5, with fewer dead-ends on long-horizon autonomous tasks
- 200K context window only (64K max output), far behind the 1M of Gemini 3 Pro and later Claude models; users reported selective attention above ~70% context fill
- Gated to $100-200/month Max tiers in Claude apps at launch; Pro subscribers were locked out and heavy users still hit limits (HN called it 'penny-wise and pound-foolish')
- Moderate latency; extended thinking adds cost and delay on simple tasks
- Superseded since early 2026: Opus 4.6/4.7/4.8 cost the same $5/$25 with 1M context and higher benchmarks, leaving 4.5 no price advantage
- Legacy API surface: manual budget_tokens extended thinking rather than the adaptive thinking of newer Claude models
Cast your verdict
One recommendation per tool per gladiator. It reshapes the crowd score everyone sees.
The arena’s verdict on Claude Haiku 4.5
Pick Haiku 4.5 if you are on the Anthropic stack and need near-Sonnet coding quality at low latency and a third of the price: it is a massive step up from Haiku 3.5 and excels as the worker model in multi-agent pipelines. It remains Anthropic's current small model as of July 2026, so it is the default cheap tier for Claude-based products. Avoid it for deep cross-domain reasoning, very large codebases (200K context cap), or pure cost-per-token shopping, where Gemini Flash and GPT mini tiers are now cheaper, and step up to Sonnet 5 when quality matters more than speed.
The arena’s verdict on Claude Opus 4.5
Pick Claude Opus 4.5 only if you have a workload already tuned and pinned to this snapshot (claude-opus-4-5-20251101) and need stability. It was a landmark release, the first past 80% on SWE-bench Verified and a 66% price cut over Opus 4.1, but Anthropic now sells Opus 4.6 through 4.8 at the identical $5/$25 rate with a 1M context window and better scores. Anyone starting a new project should choose Opus 4.8 instead, and cost-sensitive users get near-Opus coding from Sonnet 5 at $3/$15 (intro $2/$10 through Aug 2026). Avoid it entirely if your prompts approach the 200K context ceiling.
What the crowd says
On Claude Haiku 4.5
“The precise localized edits are the underrated feature. It fixes the line that needs fixing and leaves the rest alone. GPT mini class models keep rewriting half my file.”
“Haiku 4.5 gives me about 90% of Sonnet agentic coding at a third of the price, and it is fast enough that edit loops feel instant. My default for quick fixes now.”
On Claude Opus 4.5
No verdicts yet. Be the first to speak.
Keep comparing
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Haiku 4.5 better than Claude Opus 4.5?
The crowd currently sides with Claude Haiku 4.5: 67% recommend it, versus 50% for Claude Opus 4.5 (2 votes). On Reasoning, Claude Opus 4.5 rates higher (3.5/5 vs 3/5). The right pick depends on your use case. The line-by-line comparison on this page breaks down pricing, key specs and arena ratings.
Which is cheaper, Claude Haiku 4.5 or Claude Opus 4.5?
Claude Haiku 4.5 is cheaper: it starts at $5/1M out, while Claude Opus 4.5 starts at $25/1M out.
How much do Claude Haiku 4.5 and Claude Opus 4.5 cost per 1M tokens?
Claude Haiku 4.5: $1/1M in per 1M input tokens, $5/1M out per 1M output tokens. Claude Opus 4.5: $5/1M in per 1M input tokens, $25/1M out per 1M output tokens.