Claude Sonnet 4.6: Opus-Level Performance, 40% Cheaper — Benchmark Deep Dive
Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores 79.6% on SWE-bench, 72.5% on OSWorld, and 1633 Elo on GDPval-AA — matching or beating Opus 4.6 on production tasks. $3/$15 vs $5/$25 per M tokens. Analysis of Adaptive Thinking, Context Compaction, and OSWorld growth trajectory.
Did Sonnet Just Beat Opus? — Claude Sonnet 4.6 Benchmark Deep Dive
Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 4.6 on February 17, and it outperforms the flagship Opus 4.6 on several key benchmarks. At roughly 40% less cost. The secret isn't a "cheaper knock-off" — it's architectural-level structural changes.
Opus vs Sonnet: What Changed?
The old Opus-Sonnet dynamic was straightforward. Opus was the full-spec brain; Sonnet was the compressed version. Same architecture, smaller size, naturally lower performance.
In the 4.6 generation, that formula breaks.
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