Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than GPT-5.2? Here’s what to know

Anthropic has announced a major upgrade to its flagship artificial intelligence model with the release of Claude Opus 4.6, positioning it as one of the most capable AI systems currently available for professional and enterprise use. The new model introduces significant improvements in coding, long-context reasoning, autonomous task execution, and real-world knowledge work—while maintaining a strong safety profile.

At the core of the upgrade is Opus 4.6’s ability to reason more deliberately, operate reliably over extended sessions, and manage complex workflows without constant human intervention. These enhancements are particularly noticeable in software engineering tasks, where the model demonstrates stronger planning, more accurate debugging, and better self-correction when mistakes occur.

A Major Leap in Coding and Agentic Capabilities

One of the most notable advancements in Claude Opus 4.6 is its improved performance in agentic coding—tasks where the model must operate semi-autonomously over long durations. According to Anthropic, the model can now sustain complex coding projects across larger codebases with less drift, making it more effective for professional development environments.

Opus 4.6 leads the industry on Terminal-Bench 2.0, a benchmark designed to measure real-world agentic coding performance. It also outperforms competing frontier models on Humanity’s Last Exam, a rigorous test that evaluates multidisciplinary reasoning across a wide range of subjects.

In practical terms, this means the model is better at reviewing code, identifying root causes of bugs, and navigating ambiguous requirements—skills that are increasingly critical as software systems grow in size and complexity.

A First for Opus: 1 Million Token Context Window

For the first time in the Opus family, Claude Opus 4.6 introduces a 1 million token context window, currently available in beta. This allows the model to process and reason across extremely large datasets, long documents, and extensive conversations without losing coherence.

Long-context performance has historically been a weakness for many AI models due to “context rot,” where accuracy degrades as inputs grow longer. Anthropic reports that Opus 4.6 shows a dramatic improvement here, outperforming earlier Claude versions by a wide margin on long-context retrieval benchmarks.

This capability makes the model particularly useful for legal analysis, financial modeling, academic research, and enterprise document review—areas where understanding relationships across vast amounts of text is essential.

Strong Performance Across Knowledge Work Tasks

Beyond coding, Opus 4.6 is designed to excel at everyday professional tasks. The model can analyze financial data, conduct multi-step research, and work seamlessly with documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Within Cowork, Anthropic’s autonomous multitasking environment, Opus 4.6 can combine these skills to complete complex workflows with minimal supervision.

On GDPval-AA, an evaluation measuring performance on economically valuable tasks in domains such as finance and law, Opus 4.6 significantly outperforms both its predecessor and competing models. Anthropic notes that it leads the next-best industry model by a substantial margin, reinforcing its positioning as a top-tier tool for professional use.

Smarter Reasoning, Adjustable Effort

Anthropic engineers report that Opus 4.6 naturally focuses more attention on difficult parts of a task while moving quickly through simpler steps. The model also revisits its own reasoning more carefully before finalizing answers, improving accuracy on complex problems.

However, this deeper thinking can increase cost and latency for simpler tasks. To address this, developers can adjust the model’s behavior using new effort controls, selecting from low, medium, high, or max effort levels depending on their needs.

Product and Platform Enhancements

The release of Opus 4.6 is accompanied by a suite of platform updates. Developers can now use adaptive thinking, allowing the model to decide when deeper reasoning is necessary, and context compaction, which automatically summarizes older inputs to support longer-running tasks.

Anthropic has also expanded Claude’s integration with office tools. Claude now offers enhanced performance in Excel and is launching Claude in PowerPoint as a research preview, enabling users to transform structured data into branded presentations with minimal effort.

Safety Without Compromise

Despite its increased capabilities, Opus 4.6 maintains one of the strongest safety profiles among frontier models. Extensive evaluations show low rates of misaligned behavior, fewer unnecessary refusals, and improved handling of sensitive requests. Anthropic has also introduced new safeguards, particularly around cybersecurity, to prevent misuse while accelerating defensive applications.

Availability and Pricing

Claude Opus 4.6 is available now via claude.ai, the Claude API, and major cloud platforms. Pricing remains unchanged at $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens, with premium pricing for very large context usage.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is Claude Opus 4.6?
Claude Opus 4.6 is Anthropic’s most advanced AI model, designed for coding, reasoning, and professional knowledge work.

What makes Opus 4.6 different from previous versions?
It offers improved coding accuracy, agentic task execution, better long-context reasoning, and a 1M token context window.

Who should use Claude Opus 4.6?
Developers, researchers, analysts, and enterprises handling complex, long-form, or autonomous workflows.

Does Opus 4.6 cost more?
Standard pricing remains the same, though premium rates apply for prompts exceeding 200k tokens.

Is Claude Opus 4.6 safe to use?
Yes. Anthropic reports it has one of the best safety profiles among frontier AI models.