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Claude Opus 4.6

Anthropic · Claude 4

Superseded Claude 4.6 snapshot for high-difficulty reasoning, coding, and long-running agent workflows.

Part of Claude Opus family · Other versions: Claude Opus 4.8 , Claude Opus 4.7
Type
multimodal
Context
1M tokens
Max Output
128K tokens
Status
legacy
Input
$5/1M tok
Output
$25/1M tok
API Access
Yes
License
proprietary
reasoning coding agentic vision tool-use long-context
Released February 2026 · Updated July 6, 2026

Overview

Freshness note: Model capabilities, limits, and pricing can change quickly. This profile is a point-in-time snapshot last fully verified on June 8, 2026; comparison and routing references were refreshed on July 6, 2026.

Claude Opus 4.6 launched on February 5, 2026 and is no longer Anthropic’s latest Opus release after Claude Opus 4.8 shipped on May 28, 2026. This page remains useful as a historical snapshot because many comparisons, benchmarks, and older workflows still reference Opus 4.6 directly.

Anthropic’s lifecycle page still lists claude-opus-4-6 as active with no tentative retirement sooner than February 5, 2027. Signal Lens keeps it as legacy because Opus 4.8 is now the practical premium default for new Claude deployments.

Within Anthropic’s lineup, Sonnet was usually the cost-performance default while Opus 4.6 was the premium option when reliability on hard tasks mattered more than raw speed. It was designed for high-stakes knowledge work: multi-step planning, deep code changes, long-context analysis, and tool-driven workflows.

Capabilities

Opus 4.6 was strongest when tasks required sustained coherence over many steps:

  • Complex reasoning with fewer dropped constraints across long prompts.
  • Strong coding performance for large refactors, bug isolation, and architecture-sensitive changes.
  • Better long-horizon tool use, including function/tool loops that need planning and recovery.
  • High-quality instruction following for structured responses and policy-constrained workflows.
  • Solid multimodal understanding for image-plus-text analysis in docs, diagrams, and UI workflows.

In practice, teams usually routed “hard tickets” or “final pass” tasks to Opus and kept lighter workloads on cheaper models.

Technical Details

Anthropic positioned Opus 4.6 as its premium Claude 4 model at launch. Current model and pricing docs list:

  • 1M token context window at standard API pricing.
  • 128K max output tokens in the synchronous Messages API; Message Batches can reach 300K output tokens with Anthropic’s documented output-300k-2026-03-24 beta header.
  • Support for text and image input, text output, and tool use.
  • Hybrid reasoning, adaptive thinking, and effort controls for complex reasoning workloads.

Claude API versioning is also relevant operationally: claude-opus-4-6 uses Anthropic’s dateless 4.6+ ID format, but the ID is still a pinned snapshot rather than an evergreen pointer.

Pricing & Access

Base API pricing (per 1M tokens) is:

  • Input: $5
  • Output: $25

Current official pricing also lists 6.25per1Mtokensfor5−minutecachewrites,6.25 per 1M tokens for 5-minute cache writes, 10 for 1-hour cache writes, $0.50 for cache hits and refreshes, and 50% Batch API discounts. Long-context requests through 1M input tokens use the same standard Opus 4.6 per-token rate. US-only inference through Anthropic’s first-party data-residency option applies a 1.1x multiplier.

Fast mode remains documented for Opus 4.6 at 30per1Minputtokensand30 per 1M input tokens and 150 per 1M output tokens, but Anthropic’s pricing page notes that Opus 4.8 fast mode is substantially cheaper. For new speed-sensitive Opus deployments, verify that an exact 4.6 pin is really necessary.

Historically documented access options included:

  • Anthropic API (direct) as claude-opus-4-6
  • Amazon Bedrock
  • Google Cloud Vertex AI
  • Microsoft Foundry
  • Claude consumer/workspace products for interactive use

For new production work, verify whether you actually need the exact 4.6 snapshot before pinning to it. Anthropic’s current public default reference has moved to Opus 4.8.

Best Use Cases

Choose Opus 4.6 today mainly when you need to understand or reproduce older Claude 4.6-era behavior:

  • Multi-file or multi-repo coding tasks with strict correctness requirements.
  • Agent loops 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 instruction constraints and structured output.

Less ideal use cases are new greenfield workflows where current Opus 4.8 or a cheaper Sonnet route is the better fit.

Comparisons

  • Claude Opus 4.8 (Anthropic): Current premium successor and better default for new high-end Claude deployments.
  • Claude Opus 4.7 (Anthropic): Intermediate successor with stronger coding, better vision, and improved long-running task behavior compared with 4.6.
  • Claude Sonnet 5 (Anthropic): Better default cost-performance route for most production traffic.
  • GPT-5.5 (OpenAI): Comparable premium lane for difficult professional and agentic workflows in OpenAI-centered stacks.