As of February 2026, Anthropic has released the Claude 4.6 family, which includes Opus 4.6, Sonnet 4.6, and (as of now) Haiku 4.5.. Here’s a detailed comparison based on the latest available information:
🔹 1. Model Overview & Release Dates
| Model | Release Date | Primary Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 4.6 | February 5, 2026 www.instagram.com | Maximum intelligence, complex reasoning, agentic workflows |
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | February 17, 2026 www.anthropic.com | Balanced performance/cost, ideal for production-scale apps |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | Late 2025 (latest Haiku as of Feb 2026) | Speed and cost-efficiency for high-volume, simple tasks |
⚠️ Note: As of today (Feb 20, 2026), Haiku 4.6 has not been released. The latest Haiku variant is 4.5
platform.claude.com
.
🔹 2. Intelligence & Benchmarks
| Metric | Opus 4.6 | Sonnet 4.6 | Haiku 4.5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench (coding) | ~80.8% | ~79.6% | ~65–70% (estimated) |
| Long-context retrieval (1M tokens) | 76% accuracy | ~72% (beta) | Not supported at 1M |
| Agentic planning | State-of-the-art; parallel subtask execution | Strong; handles multi-step browser automation | Basic tool use |
| Reasoning depth | Adaptive Thinking™ (dynamic reasoning depth) | Extended thinking mode | Fast, shallow reasoning |
Opus 4.6 leads in complex software engineering and autonomous agent tasks, while Sonnet 4.6 closes ~98% of the performance gap at a fraction of the cost
www.nxcode.io.
🔹 3. Context Window & Output Limits
| Feature | Opus 4.6 | Sonnet 4.6 | Haiku 4.5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard context | 200K tokens | 200K tokens | 200K tokens |
| Max context (beta) | 1M tokens | 1M tokens (beta) | 200K only |
| Max output tokens | 128K | 64K | 16–32K (estimated) |
Opus 4.6 uniquely supports 128K output tokens, enabling ultra-long code generations or document drafts in a single response.
🔹 4. Speed & Cost (per 1M input tokens)
| Model | Input Cost | Output Cost | Relative Speed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Opus 4.6 | ~$15 | ~$75 | Slowest (deep reasoning) |
| Sonnet 4.6 | ~$3 | ~$15 | 3–5× faster than Opus |
| Haiku 4.5 | ~$0.80 | ~$4 | Fastest (sub-100ms latency) |
Sonnet 4.6 delivers Opus-level performance at ~5× lower cost, making it the default for most enterprise workloads
🔹 5. Knowledge Cutoff
- Opus 4.6: May 2025 simonwillison.net
- Sonnet 4.6: August 2025 (most up-to-date) simonwillison.net
- Haiku 4.5: February 2025 simonwillison.net
For time-sensitive domains (e.g., fintech regulations, CBDC developments), Sonnet 4.6 offers the freshest knowledge.
🔹 6. Ideal Use Cases
- Opus 4.6:
- Autonomous AI agents managing full SDLC cycles
- Analyzing million-token codebases or legal/financial documents
- High-stakes architecture design
- Sonnet 4.6:
- Production APIs, customer-facing chatbots
- Daily enterprise tasks (code reviews, data analysis, report generation)
- Cost-effective scaling for LinkedIn profile optimization
- Haiku 4.5:
- Real-time moderation, log analysis, simple Q&A
- High-throughput preprocessing pipelines
Summary Recommendation
Use Opus 4.6 for deep-dive architectural modeling, security threat simulations, or drafting complex technical chapters.
- Use Sonnet 4.6 for daily productivity, interview prep (IT support/Head of Platform Security), and LinkedIn content creation.
- Use Haiku 4.5 for lightweight automation (e.g., parsing incident tickets, summarizing meeting notes).