Claude Opus 4.8 vs Claude Sonnet 4.6
Compare Claude Opus 4.8 and Claude Sonnet 4.6 on the metrics that decide an agent workload.
| Metric | Claude Opus 4.8 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Input / 1M | $5.00 | $3.00 |
| Output / 1M | $25.00 | $15.00 |
| Cache read / 1M | $0.50 (−90%) | $0.30 (−90%) |
| Reuse-adj @55% | $8.14 | $4.89 |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Cache capture | 93% | 91% |
| Warm TTFT | 240ms (−68%) | 190ms (−65%) |
| Quality index | 97 | 90 |
Teal marks the better value in each row. Reuse-adjusted assumes 55% prefix reuse and a 25% output share.
Pick Claude Opus 4.8 when it scores higher on the composite quality index, it captures more of the available reuse.
Pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 when it is cheaper once prefix reuse is priced in, it answers faster on warm cache hits.
Claude Opus 4.8 leads on quality while Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads on reuse-adjusted cost. Send latency- and budget-sensitive volume to Claude Sonnet 4.6 and reserve Claude Opus 4.8 for the hard requests. Zumik's aliases route between them automatically under policy.
Claude Opus 4.8 vs Claude Sonnet 4.6, answered.
Is Claude Opus 4.8 or Claude Sonnet 4.6 cheaper?
At 55% prefix reuse, Claude Opus 4.8 blends to about $8.14 per 1M tokens and Claude Sonnet 4.6 to about $4.89. Claude Sonnet 4.6 is cheaper on that basis.
Which has the larger context window?
Claude Opus 4.8 has the larger window: 1M vs 1M tokens.
Which captures more reuse?
Claude Opus 4.8 shows higher measured cache capture (93% vs 91%) in the Zumik corpus.
Let an alias pick for you.
Route to whichever model wins under current policy automatically. Zumik resolves the alias to the best fit per request, so you never hard-code a loser.