ModelRefs / Claude 3 Opus - AI model implementation reference

Claude 3 Opus - AI model implementation reference

Claude 3 Opus is a retired Anthropic model — the highest-capacity member of the original Claude 3 family, positioned for demanding reasoning, analysis, and vision tasks. Anthropic's model deprecations page lists claude-3-opus-20240229 as deprecated on 30 June 2025 and retired on 5 January 2026, with Claude Opus 4.8 as the recommended replacement. Those dates apply to Anthropic-operated platforms; Amazon Bedrock and Google Cloud set their own retirement schedules. This profile is a historical reference rather than a selection candidate for new work.

Overview

Claude 3 Opus is attributed to Anthropic in ModelRefs' canonical registry. Tracked modalities: Text input and output, Image input. Primary use cases considered on ModelRefs: Complex reasoning and analysis where response quality is prioritized over cost; Vision-enabled document understanding with measured quality targets.

This ModelRefs profile is decision-support material, not a final or universal ranking. Confirm current behavior, access, pricing, limits, licensing, and lifecycle in Anthropic's own documentation, and evaluate Claude 3 Opus on representative workloads before implementation.

Lifecycle

Retired. No longer served. Requests to it fail rather than falling back.

Deprecated
30 June 2025
Stopped serving
5 January 2026
Provider's replacement
claude-opus-4-8
Applies to
Anthropic-operated platforms (Claude API, Claude Platform on AWS, Microsoft Foundry); Amazon Bedrock and Google Cloud set their own retirement schedules.

Provider-documented snapshots

  • claude-3-opus-20240229

Source: platform.claude.com, checked 2026-10-16.

Benchmark & Evaluation

ModelRefs currently has partial, narrow benchmark coverage for Claude 3 Opus. Treat the available benchmark evidence as one input to the decision, not a guarantee that Claude 3 Opus is the strongest option for your workload, and evaluate it on representative workloads before selecting it.

  • No benchmark score is imported into this editorial record. Canonical benchmark runs and scores are governed separately with their own provenance and render only through those records; coverage in ModelRefs is currently narrow (partial), so any scored comparison must show its coverage limits.
  • ModelRefs holds canonical run evidence on graduate-level reasoning (GPQA); coverage is narrow and provider-reported evaluations are not independently reproduced here.

Implementation considerations

  • Compare Claude 3 Opus against newer Sonnet-tier models on your tasks; higher tier does not guarantee better cost-adjusted quality.
  • Requests to claude-3-opus-20240229 fail on Anthropic-operated platforms, so migration to Claude Opus 4.8 or another current Claude model is required rather than optional.
  • Retired on Anthropic-operated platforms (Claude API, Claude Platform on AWS, Microsoft Foundry) since 5 January 2026; requests to a retired model ID fail rather than falling back.
  • Amazon Bedrock and Google Cloud publish their own model tables and retirement schedules, so availability there must be checked separately.
  • Feature flags, rate limits, and data-retention controls differ by platform and account; check the models overview for the current matrix.

Risks and limitations

  • Hosted-model behavior, quotas, pricing, and data controls can change without a client-side version pin unless a dated snapshot is used.
  • Provider-reported capabilities require task-specific evaluation before production reliance.

Source coverage

ModelRefs reviewed Anthropic's published material on 2026-07-12. Model behavior, access, pricing, limits, and lifecycle can change, so verify the linked provider documentation before implementation. What remains open is recorded on this page: Cost-adjusted comparison against newer Claude generations needs task-level evidence. Fit and comparison signals remain provisional until tested on your own workload.

Connected ModelRefs evidence

Sources

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 - AI model implementation reference.