Head-to-head
Claude Haiku 4.5 vs Claude Opus 4.7: which AI model wins in 2026?
Claude Haiku 4.5 ($5/1M out) and Claude Opus 4.7 ($25/1M out) are two of the most-used AI models in 2026. Across 5 community votes, Claude Haiku 4.5 leads with 67% approval.
Quick verdict
On Reasoning, pick Claude Opus 4.7: the arena rates it 4.5/5 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 4.7.
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 4.7
- 87.6% SWE-bench Verified (up from 80.8% on Opus 4.6) and 64.3% SWE-bench Pro at launch, ahead of GPT-5.4 (57.7%) and Gemini 3.1 Pro (54.2%)
- 1M-token context window and 128K max output at flat $5/$25 pricing with no long-context premium (300K output via Batch API beta)
- First Claude with high-resolution vision: accepts images up to 2576px on the long edge with pixel-accurate coordinates, ~3x prior detail
- Standout code review: finds more real bugs with stronger cross-file reasoning than rivals in independent tests, and 21% fewer document-reasoning errors than Opus 4.6
- Fine cost control via new xhigh effort level and Task Budgets (beta): low-effort 4.7 roughly matches medium-effort 4.6 output quality
- Recent knowledge: reliable cutoff of January 2026, the freshest of any Claude model at release
- New tokenizer inflates token counts roughly 30% for the same text versus pre-4.7 models (per Anthropic's own docs), raising effective per-request cost despite the unchanged sticker price
- Very verbose in agentic use: one benchmark found GPT-5.5 used 72% fewer output tokens on equivalent coding tasks, and reviewers call its narration over-communicative
- Breaking API changes bite migrators: temperature/top_p/top_k and thinking budget_tokens now return 400 errors, and thinking text is hidden by default
- Moderate latency with minutes-long turns at high effort; fast mode is a premium research preview already deprecated on 4.7
- Superseded by Opus 4.8 at the same $5/$25 within ~3 months, and real-time cybersecurity safeguards can false-positive on legitimate security work
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 4.7
Choose Opus 4.7 only if you are already pinned to it for reproducibility: Opus 4.8 costs the same $5/$25, keeps an identical API surface, and outperforms it, making it the better default for new projects. It remains a very strong pick for agentic coding, code review and 1M-context document work, and is a clear upgrade over Opus 4.6. Teams migrating from 4.6 should budget for breaking API changes and a tokenizer that yields roughly 30% more tokens per prompt. Cost-sensitive users should look at Sonnet 5, which delivers near-Opus quality at $3/$15 (intro $2/$10 through August 31, 2026).
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 4.7
“Watch your invoices. New tokenizer counts ~30% more tokens for the same text, and it narrates every tiny step. Sticker price unchanged, effective cost definitely not.”
“Came from 4.6 and stopped chunking repos entirely. 1M context, 128K output, flat $5/$25 with no long-context premium. That pricing decision alone won me over.”
“87.6 SWE-bench Verified is not just marketing, it closes tickets GPT-5.4 fumbles. And the hi-res vision with pixel-accurate coords finally makes screenshot debugging useful.”
Keep comparing
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Haiku 4.5 better than Claude Opus 4.7?
The crowd currently sides with Claude Haiku 4.5: 67% recommend it, versus 57% for Claude Opus 4.7 (5 votes). On Reasoning, Claude Opus 4.7 rates higher (4.5/5 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 4.7?
Claude Haiku 4.5 is cheaper: it starts at $5/1M out, while Claude Opus 4.7 starts at $25/1M out.
How much do Claude Haiku 4.5 and Claude Opus 4.7 cost per 1M tokens?
Claude Haiku 4.5: $1/1M in per 1M input tokens, $5/1M out per 1M output tokens. Claude Opus 4.7: $5/1M in per 1M input tokens, $25/1M out per 1M output tokens.