Head-to-head · frontier vs frontier

Claude Opus 4.5 Pro vs Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning: which model should you choose?

We compared Claude Opus 4.5 Pro and Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Claude Opus 4.5 Pro has the stronger average benchmark score; Claude Opus 4.5 Pro is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.

Anthropic

Claude Opus 4.5 Pro

Claude Opus 4.5 Pro is a frontier model from Anthropic. It offers a 200,000-token context window, costs $20.98 per million input tokens and $85.59 per million output tokens, and averages 89.1 across the index's benchmark suite.

Input
$20.98 / 1M
Output
$85.59 / 1M
Context
200,000
Avg score
89.1
Open weights
No
Full Claude Opus 4.5 Pro page
Anthropic

Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning

Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning is a frontier model from Anthropic. It offers a 2,000,000-token context window, costs $20.91 per million input tokens and $108.13 per million output tokens, and averages 88.2 across the index's benchmark suite.

Input
$20.91 / 1M
Output
$108.13 / 1M
Context
2,000,000
Avg score
88.2
Open weights
No
Full Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning page

Specification comparison

SpecClaude Opus 4.5 ProClaude Opus 4.5 ReasoningEdge
Input price / 1M$20.98$20.91B
Output price / 1M$85.59$108.13A
Context window200,0002,000,000B
Max output32,76816,384A
Average score89.188.2A
Arena Elo1483.91497.5B
Open weightsNoNoTie

Benchmark comparison

Claude Opus 4.5 Pro wins 8, Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning wins 4, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5 ProClaude Opus 4.5 ReasoningGapWinner
MMLU-Pro91.290.70.5Claude Opus 4.5 Pro
GPQA Diamond86.082.63.4Claude Opus 4.5 Pro
SWE-bench Verified81.179.51.6Claude Opus 4.5 Pro
HumanEval93.492.11.3Claude Opus 4.5 Pro
MATH-50091.291.60.4Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning
AIME 202591.488.92.5Claude Opus 4.5 Pro
LiveCodeBench84.181.82.3Claude Opus 4.5 Pro
IFEval96.195.90.2Claude Opus 4.5 Pro
TruthfulQA86.789.02.3Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning
HellaSwag95.293.81.4Claude Opus 4.5 Pro
MMMU83.384.61.3Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning
Arena Elo1483.91497.513.6Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning

Price analysis

On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Claude Opus 4.5 Pro costs about $37.13 per million tokens and Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning costs about $42.72. Claude Opus 4.5 Pro is roughly 13% cheaper than Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.

Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning has the larger context window at 2,000,000 tokens, compared with 200,000 for Claude Opus 4.5 Pro. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.

Verdict

Across 12 shared benchmarks, Claude Opus 4.5 Pro wins 8, Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning wins 4, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Claude Opus 4.5 Pro leads Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning by 0.9 points (89.1 versus 88.2).

The price picture favours Claude Opus 4.5 Pro. The context picture favours Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning. Those two dimensions often matter more than a few benchmark points once a model is good enough for the task.

If you need a single default, start with Claude Opus 4.5 Pro for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.

Choose Claude Opus 4.5 Pro if

  • You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
  • Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
  • You need the larger 32,768-token output limit.

Choose Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning if

  • You need the larger 2,000,000-token context window.

FAQ

Is Claude Opus 4.5 Pro better than Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning?

On the index average, Claude Opus 4.5 Pro leads Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning by 0.9 points (89.1 versus 88.2). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Claude Opus 4.5 Pro wins 8 benchmarks, Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning wins 4.

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.5 Pro or Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning?

Claude Opus 4.5 Pro is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $37.13 per million tokens, versus $42.72 for Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning.

Which has the larger context window?

Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning has the larger context window at 2,000,000 tokens. Claude Opus 4.5 Pro has 200,000 tokens.

Are these models open weights?

Claude Opus 4.5 Pro is proprietary; Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning is proprietary.

Which should I choose for production?

If you need a single default, start with Claude Opus 4.5 Pro for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.

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