[good]

Anthropic

Claude Opus 4.6

Top Pick
7.5
out of 10

Anthropic's most powerful model and the top-ranked non-reasoning LLM on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index as of February 2026 (AA Index 46). Opus 4.6 is the model you reach for when quality matters more than cost: complex multi-step analysis, high-stakes creative work, and agentic workflows where a small output quality difference has real downstream consequences. The price — $5/$25 per 1M tokens — reflects that positioning. Unrestricted consumer access requires the Claude Max plan ($100/month).

Context window

200K tokens

API (blended)

$10.00/1M

Consumer access

$20/mo

Multimodal

Yes

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Strengths

  • +#1 non-reasoning intelligence score on Artificial Analysis Index (AA 46) as of Feb 2026
  • +Strongest on nuanced reasoning, complex analysis, and multi-step instructions
  • +Best writing quality of any Anthropic model — notably better than Sonnet for high-stakes content
  • +200K context window handles most real-world document workloads
  • +Strong on agentic tasks requiring judgment across many steps

Weaknesses

  • -Most expensive in the Anthropic lineup — $10/1M blended, 67% more than Sonnet
  • -No meaningful free consumer access — Max plan required
  • -Context window (200K) is smaller than Gemini 3 Pro, GPT-5.2, Llama 4 Scout, and Grok 4.1
  • -Same 200K limit as Sonnet 4.6 despite the price premium

Best for

high-stakes analysiscomplex creative projectsagentic workflowsenterprise tasks requiring best output quality

Not ideal for

budget API usecasual everyday chathigh-volume processinglong-context (>200K) tasks

Pricing details

Subscription plans

ProPrimarily Claude Sonnet 4.6 with limited Opus 4.6 messages(Opus access caps out quickly; heavy use routed to Sonnet)
$20/mo
Max (5x)5× more usage than Pro, full Claude Opus 4.6 access, extended context projects
$100/mo
Max (20x)20× more usage than Pro, priority access, all Max features
$200/mo

API pricing

AnthropicPrompt caching available: cached input at $0.50/1M. Batch API: 50% discount. This is the non-reasoning (standard) mode.
$5/$25
AWS BedrockSame pricing as direct. Cross-region inference available.
$5/$25
Google Vertex AISame pricing as direct. Committed use discounts may apply.
$5/$25

Prices verified February 2026. LLM pricing changes frequently — verify at the provider's site before budgeting.

Last updated: February 2026

Compare Claude Opus 4.6

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