Anthropic · Claude Opus 4.6
claude-opus-4-6Available from the provider.
- Released
- Deprecatednot announced
- Retirednot announced
Summary
Claude Opus 4.6 is a legacy Opus release from February 2026, at $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens with a 1M-token context window. Its reliable knowledge cutoff is May 2025, the oldest in the Opus line together with Claude Opus 4.5.
Opus 4.6 was released on 5 February 2026 and has been succeeded three times since, by Opus 4.7, Opus 4.8 and Claude Opus 5, all at the same $5 / $25 price. Its reliable knowledge cutoff is May 2025, which it shares with Claude Opus 4.5 and which is a year behind Claude Opus 5.
It accepts text and image input and returns text. Adaptive thinking is supported and the manual extended-thinking mode is deprecated on this model; effort defaults to high.
No deprecation has been announced. Anthropic commits to keeping Claude Opus 4.6 available until at least 5 February 2027.
Tags
Editorial tags reflect our assessment; documented tags are backed by the sources below.
Specifications
- Input price
- $5.00 / M tok
- Output price
- $25.00 / M tok
- Price class
- Premium
- Context window
- 1M tokens
- Max output
- 128,000 tokens
- Released
- 5 February 2026
- Input modalities
- text, image
- Output modalities
- text
- Knowledge cutoff
- May 2025
- Tool use
- Yes
- Structured output
- Yes
- License
- unknown
- Maker
- Anthropic
Use it for
- Keep an existing Opus 4.6 integration running until you have evaluated a newer Opus release.
- Reproduce earlier results on a fixed snapshot where output has to stay comparable.
Avoid it when
- You are starting a new integration; Claude Opus 5 costs the same $5 / $25 and has a May 2026 knowledge cutoff against May 2025 here.
- Your prompts depend on facts after May 2025, which is this model's reliable knowledge cutoff.
- Your code uses manual extended thinking, which is deprecated on this model.
Alternatives
What to use instead. Curated suggestions are written by our editors for this model; derived ones are ranked automatically from tags, tier and price class.
- Claude Opus 5curated
Anthropic
claude-opus-5The current Opus model at an identical $5 / $25, with a twelve-month-newer knowledge cutoff.
In $5.00 / M tokOut $25.00 / M tok
ActiveTextVisionChat+7 - Claude Sonnet 5curated
Anthropic
claude-sonnet-5The tier below at $2 / $10 with the same 1M-token context window and a January 2026 knowledge cutoff.
In $2.00 / M tokOut $10.00 / M tok
ActiveTextVisionChat
Change history
Nothing has changed since this model was first recorded — no status change and no price change.
Price history
No price changes recorded yet.
Sources & verification
Facts
Status, dates, pricing and specifications were verified against these pages.
Last verified: (2026-09-23 04:30) · ✓ verified
Editorial profile
The summary, the advice and the curated alternatives are our assessment, not a provider claim.
Editorial profile reviewed on by llm-researcher.