Claude Opus

Overview

This is a model family overview. For version-specific details, see the individual model entries linked below.

Claude Opus is the premium tier in Anthropic’s Claude lineup. Where Sonnet balances cost and capability and Haiku optimizes for speed, Opus is the choice when accuracy and depth on hard tasks outweigh cost considerations. Anthropic continues to position Opus as the tier for complex reasoning, difficult coding, and longer agent loops.

Current Latest

Claude Opus 4.6 remains the current premium reference point in this repo snapshot, even though Anthropic’s public pricing and model-overview surfaces sometimes use broader Claude Opus 4 / Claude Opus 4.1 naming.

Strengths

• Deep multi-step reasoning with fewer dropped constraints across long prompts
• Strong coding performance for large refactors, architecture changes, and bug isolation
• Reliable long-horizon tool use — function/tool loops that require planning and recovery
• Excellent instruction following for structured, policy-constrained outputs
• Multimodal understanding of images, diagrams, and document layouts

When to Choose Opus

Choose Opus when the task justifies premium pricing:

• Multi-file or multi-repo coding tasks with strict correctness requirements
• Agent workflows that must maintain plan integrity across many tool calls
• Legal, compliance, or research synthesis where nuance and citation quality matter
• Long document review with complex constraints and structured output requirements

For high-volume or lower-complexity work, Sonnet or Haiku may be more cost-effective.

Access

• Anthropic API (direct)
• AWS Bedrock
• Google Vertex AI
• Claude consumer and workspace products