Claude Opus 4.1 / 4.5 / 4.6 / 4.7 | Performance & Pricing Comparison
For developers who can't decide which Claude Opus is the best, we compared 4.1 / 4.5 / 4.6 / 4.7 across four axes: SWE-bench score, pricing, speed, and migration risk. We've organized the optimal choice by use case — for autonomous agents, cost optimization, and stable production deployment — and structured the explanation to help you grasp the key numbers as quickly as possible.
If you need the "best" for autonomous agents or large-scale refactoring, Opus 4.7 stands a head above the rest with SWE-bench Verified 87.6%. In addition to coding accuracy that surpasses GPT-5.4, its p50 latency of 183 seconds has reached practical usability.
If you want Opus-level performance while keeping costs down, Opus 4.5 at the significantly reduced price of $5 input / $25 output is the optimal choice. It achieves roughly one-third the cost of Opus 4.1 and a 76% reduction in output tokens, marking a turning point where Opus-level performance meets Sonnet-level costs.
If you cannot take migration risks in production, sticking with Opus 4.6 is the practical solution. Opus 4.7 contains breaking changes — temperature / top_p / top_k parameters are no longer supported — making it rational to continue stable operations on 4.6 for systems that depend on these parameter controls.
目次 (9)
- The Verdict on the Best Claude Opus — Quick Reference by Use Case
- Generational SWE-bench Verified Scores
- Pricing Comparison — From Opus 4.1 to 4.7
- Agent Performance — Which Is Truly "Best" for Autonomous Tasks?
- Vision Performance — The "Best" Changes with Image Input Too
- Migration Risk with Breaking Changes — The Rationale for Sticking with Opus 4.6
- "Best" Comparison with Competing Models — GPT-5.4 / GPT-5.5 / Gemini 3 Pro
- Is There Any Reason to Choose Opus 4.1 in 2026?
- Summary — The Answer to "Which Claude Opus Is Best" Depends on Use Case
The Verdict on the Best Claude Opus — Quick Reference by Use Case
| Model | SWE-bench | Price (Input) | Speed (p50) | Primary Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Opus 4.7 | 87.6% | $5 / MTok | 183 sec | Autonomous agents, large-scale refactoring |
| Opus 4.6 | — | $5 / MTok | 242 sec | Migration risk avoidance, stable production |
| Opus 4.5 | — | $5 / MTok | — | Cost optimization, Sonnet replacement |
| Opus 4.1 | 74.5% | $15 / MTok | — | Legacy integrations, specific regression testing |
Determining the "best" by a single metric is impossible. For coding accuracy, Opus 4.7's SWE-bench Verified 87.6% stands out, officially reported as surpassing GPT-5.4. But "best" doesn't always mean "highest score." For output token efficiency, Opus 4.5 achieved a 76% reduction compared to Sonnet 4.5, with pricing dropping to one-third of Opus 4.1. For stability in production, there's also the option of keeping Opus 4.6 to avoid the breaking changes introduced in 4.7 (temperature / top_p / top_k no longer supported).
In short, as of May 2026, the best choice is: "4.7 for autonomous agents and large-scale refactoring, 4.5 for cost optimization, and 4.6 for production environments where migration risk is unacceptable." Below, we break down the numbers that support this conclusion one by one.
Sources: Claude Opus 4.7 Benchmark Analysis (apiyi.com) / Introducing Claude Opus 4.5 (Anthropic)
Generational SWE-bench Verified Scores
SWE-bench Verified evaluates AI on real GitHub Issues, making it the most reliable axis for determining which Opus is "best." Lining up the scores by generation: Opus 4.1 at 74.5%, Opus 4.5 at the then-world-record, and Opus 4.7 at 87.6%, surpassing GPT-5.4. This represents an improvement of more than 13 points in a short period, demonstrating that the evolution of coding AI is accelerating rather than stagnating.
However, it's worth noting that SWE-bench is a single metric and does not directly address UI design, complex specification interpretation, or long-term maintenance decisions. In hands-on testing reported on Zenn, while Opus 4.6 and 4.5 were equivalent on "pass/fail criteria," Opus 4.6 was superior in "quality, robustness, and UX." Even with the same score, real-world differences in feel certainly exist.
Source: Verified with Claude Code: The Difference Between Opus 4.6/4.5 Shows in "Quality" (Zenn)
Pricing Comparison — From Opus 4.1 to 4.7
When discussing the "best," leaving out pricing loses touch with reality. Opus 4.1 was priced at $15 input / $25 output (per million tokens), but Opus 4.5 saw a significant reduction to $5 input / $25 output. This is roughly one-third the cost of Opus 4.1, and in the sense that Opus-level performance was delivered at Sonnet-level pricing, it marked a turning point in Anthropic's pricing strategy.
Opus 4.6 / 4.7 have maintained the same $5 / $25 pricing. However, "token unit price" and "actual cost incurred" are different things. Opus 4.7 consistently makes fewer model and tool call invocations, consuming fewer AI units than Opus 4.6. For the same task, 4.7 often ends up cheaper, making a comparison based solely on token unit price premature. In terms of p50 latency, Opus 4.7 at 183 seconds versus Opus 4.6 at 242 seconds represents approximately 25% faster performance.
Source: Claude Opus 4.7 Delivers Powerful Performance and Higher Efficiency vs Opus 4.6 (Box)
Agent Performance — Which Is Truly "Best" for Autonomous Tasks?
Anthropic's own stance is that for simply writing code, Sonnet 4.6 handles 80–90% of tasks sufficiently. Opus 4.7 is positioned for "complex agents, large codebases, and long-duration autonomous tasks," with significant improvements over previous generations in BrowseComp-Plus (autonomous search) and Vending-Bench (long-term decision-making). At the time of Opus 4.5's announcement, Vending-Bench achieved a 29% improvement over Sonnet 4.5, with further improvements in 4.7.
If you define "best" in terms of autonomous agents, Opus 4.7 is the undisputed leader. It's designed to minimize backtracking in multi-step tasks and avoid excessive tool call repetition. On the other hand, for single-turn Q&A or short code generation, the advantage of 4.7 is difficult to feel, and there are many situations where Sonnet 4.6 or Opus 4.5 is the "smarter choice" in terms of performance per dollar.
Source: Claude Opus 4.7 VS 4.6 Comparison (apiyi.com)
Vision Performance — The "Best" Changes with Image Input Too
Often overlooked is image input performance. Opus 4.7 is the first in the Claude series to support high-resolution vision up to 2,576px / 3.75MP, handling approximately 3.26 times more pixels than the 1,568px limit of Opus 4.6 and earlier. For use cases requiring vision — such as recognizing fine details in screenshots, reading small figures in academic PDF papers, and detecting UI elements in screen automation — Opus 4.7 is overwhelmingly superior.
However, the improvement in vision resolution is not directly reflected in API pricing, and it can be used at the same $5 / $25 as Opus 4.6. For agent development with heavy image processing, this becomes the deciding factor in the "best" determination.
Source: A Deep Dive into Claude Opus 4.7: Evolution from Opus 4.6 (note / kazu@Generative AI × Education)
Migration Risk with Breaking Changes — The Rationale for Sticking with Opus 4.6
Often overlooked in the migration to Opus 4.7 are breaking changes. The ability to specify temperature / top_p / top_k, as well as Extended Thinking Budget settings available in Opus 4.6 and earlier, now returns HTTP 400 errors in Opus 4.7. If your production system uses these, migration is not as simple as swapping the model ID.
For this reason, some Anthropic users have decided to "stick with Opus 4.6 rather than chase the latest model." The reasoning is that Opus 4.6 maintains the same API pricing, has no breaking changes, and offers performance that is sufficient for practical use. "Best" doesn't necessarily mean "latest" — the perspective that "best = the model that doesn't break your production system" is equally valid.
Source: Claude Opus 4.7 — Key Points on Performance, Pricing, and Breaking Changes (Clauder Navi)
"Best" Comparison with Competing Models — GPT-5.4 / GPT-5.5 / Gemini 3 Pro
When explaining "Claude Opus is the best" internally, the inevitable question is "How does it compare to GPT or Gemini?" On SWE-bench Verified, Opus 4.7's 87.6% surpasses GPT-5.4, but in real-world verification across 10 business scenarios, the on-the-ground reality is that "the best model varies by task type." The division of strengths looks like this: GPT-5.5 leads in text generation, summarization, and dialogue quality; Opus 4.7 leads in coding, autonomous agents, and long-form reasoning; Gemini 3 Pro leads in long-context and audio multimodal tasks.
You can only definitively say "Claude Opus is the best" for use cases requiring coding, complex agents, and faithful adherence to disruptive instructions. If text generation is your only need, Opus is not necessarily the best choice.
Sources: GPT-5.5 vs. Opus 4.7: Which Is Actually Usable for Business? (zidaiinc.com) / What Is Claude Opus 4.5? Comparison with ChatGPT 5.1 and Gemini 3 Pro (Sotatek)
Is There Any Reason to Choose Opus 4.1 in 2026?
Finally, a word on Opus 4.1, which may seem to have fallen out of the current generation. Its SWE-bench Verified score of 74.5% was the highest standard of its time, and while maintaining the same price as Opus 4, it clearly outperformed Opus 4 on multi-file refactoring and long-duration research tasks. As of 2026, with the arrival of Opus 4.5 / 4.6 / 4.7, it is no longer the flagship, but cases remain where "deliberately choosing 4.1" makes sense — for specific regression testing and for legacy integrations seeking to avoid breaking changes introduced from Opus 4.5 onward.
It is Anthropic's responsibility to update "the best," but choosing "the best for you" is ultimately the user's decision. Based on the numbers in this article, weigh your organization's use cases against the cost of migration.
Source: What Is Claude Opus 4.1 — The Enhanced Opus with SWE-bench 74.5% (Clauder Navi)
Summary — The Answer to "Which Claude Opus Is Best" Depends on Use Case
To restate the conclusion as of May 2026: if you want to handle coding, autonomous agents, and high-resolution vision at the highest quality, choose Opus 4.7. If you prioritize cost efficiency and output token reduction, choose Opus 4.5. If you want to avoid breaking changes and keep production stable, choose Opus 4.6. If you need to continue using it for legacy integrations or specific regression testing, choose Opus 4.1.
"Best" is not determined by a single score. It is a multidimensional choice that encompasses SWE-bench Verified, pricing, speed, vision resolution, the presence or absence of breaking changes, and your organization's operational requirements. Check the primary sources via the citation links in this article, and find the Opus that is best for your use case.
Updated June 2026: Claude Opus 4.8 (with 1M token context support) has also been released. This article summarizes comparison information up through Opus 4.7; for details on Opus 4.8's performance and pricing, please refer to a separate article.
