ModelRefs / Claude 3 Opus vs Claude 3.5 Sonnet
Claude 3 Opus vs Claude 3.5 Sonnet
Claude 3 Opus vs Claude 3.5 Sonnet: side-by-side benchmarks, pricing, context windows, coding ability and deployment. Pick the right model for your stack.
Overview
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: Claude 3.5 Sonnet is Anthropic's mid-2024 balanced model, the release that introduced computer use and anchored Anthropic's agentic-coding positioning for its generation across a 200,000-token context window. It is now retired: Anthropic deprecated both the claude-3-5-sonnet-20240620 and claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022 snapshots on 13 August 2025 and retired them on 28 October 2025 on Anthropic-operated platforms, naming Claude Sonnet 5.5 as the replacement.
Claude 3 Opus: Claude 3 Opus is Anthropic's February 2024 frontier model and the most capable of the original Claude 3 family, accepting text and image input across a 200,000-token context window. The claude-3-opus-20240229 snapshot was deprecated on 30 June 2025 and retired on Anthropic-operated platforms on 5 January 2026, with Claude Opus 4.8 named as its replacement.
Context window: Claude 3.5 Sonnet accepts up to 200,000 tokens, Claude 3 Opus up to 200,000. Confirm the limit for your specific deployment channel before relying on it.
Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs Claude 3 Opus at a glance
| Attribute | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Claude 3 Opus |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Released | 2024-06-20 | 2024-02-29 |
| Context window | 200,000 tokens | 200,000 tokens |
| Input price | $3/M tokens | $15/M tokens |
| Output price | $15/M tokens | $75/M tokens |
| Licence | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Self-hostable | No, hosted only | No, hosted only |
| Modalities | text, vision | text, vision |
Continue your research
Use these connected ModelRefs sections to compare alternatives, inspect implementation paths, and review the evidence and governance boundaries relevant to Claude 3 Opus vs Claude 3.5 Sonnet.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, Claude 3 Opus or Claude 3.5 Sonnet?
Claude 3 Opus and Claude 3.5 Sonnet target different workloads — see the benchmark and pricing tables for a side-by-side answer.
Is Claude 3 Opus cheaper than Claude 3.5 Sonnet?
Compare $0.0150 vs $0.00300 on this page.