Pairwise benchmark snapshot · Aug 16, 2026

Claude 3 Opus vs Claude Opus 4 benchmark

Name: Claude 3 Opus vs Claude Opus 4 AI benchmark comparison
Creator: CompareLLM
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This page compares Claude 3 Opus (Anthropic) and Claude Opus 4 (Anthropic) using the latest snapshots we have as of Aug 16, 2026. On preference Elo, Claude Opus 4 is ahead by 242 points (1,490 vs 1,248; seed-bootstrap (Aug 1, 2026)). On SWE-bench coding, Claude Opus 4 resolves 72.5% versus 38.4% (seed-bootstrap (Aug 1, 2026)). Claude Opus 4 streams faster (58 tok/s) while Claude 3 Opus is the cheaper output token ($75/1M). Claude 3 Opus has the larger context window (200k tokens). Every cell below is a dated snapshot from a named public source — we do not invent missing scores, and we do not run SWE-bench ourselves.

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Anthropic

Claude 3 Opus

Original Claude 3 flagship. Kept so opus 3 vs later Opus and vs GPT-4o still resolve.

Elo 1,248$75/1M out

Anthropic

Claude Opus 4

First Claude 4 Opus generation. Baseline for opus 4 vs opus 5.

Elo 1,490$75/1M out

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Model A

Model B

Quick vs:vs Claude Opus 4.5 vs Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Claude 3.7 Sonnet

Interactive Comparison Diagram

Matchup Breakdown

Tug-of-War Matchup Matrix

Category wins across intelligence, speed, and pricing efficiency.

Claude 3 Opus (0)vsClaude Opus 4 (7)

Claude 3 Opus: 0W (0%)Overall: Claude Opus 4Claude Opus 4: 7W (100%)

← Claude 3 Opus3 tiesClaude Opus 4 →

Claude Opus 4 (5/5)

Intelligence & Reasoning

Preference Elo, Coding proficiency, SWE-bench & LiveBench accuracy

Preference Elo

1,248vs1,490

Coding Elo

—vs1,502

SWE-bench

38.4%vs72.5%

LiveBench

46.2%vs66.8%

GPQA Diamond

50.4%vs80.4%

Claude 3 Opus: 0WClaude Opus 4: 5W

Claude Opus 4 (2/2)

Speed & Latency

Generation throughput and time to first token responsiveness

Output speed

48 tok/svs58 tok/s

Time to first token

420 msvs390 ms

Claude 3 Opus: 0WClaude Opus 4: 2W

Tied (0/3)

Pricing & Capacity

Cost per million tokens and max context window length

Output price

$75/1Mvs$75/1M

Input price

$15/1Mvs$15/1M

Context window

200kvs200k

Claude 3 Opus: 0WClaude Opus 4: 0W

Capability Matchup Radar

Multi-Dimensional Capability Radar

Each spoke is a skill. Farther from the center is better (0–100th percentile). Tap any dot to inspect details.

Tap any node to inspect

Percentile 0–100

Dimensional AdvantageClaude Opus 4 4/6

Preference Elo

Claude Opus 4

242 pts advantage

Throughput Speed

Claude Opus 4

10 tok/s faster

Price Efficiency

Claude 3 Opus

Same token price

Full Benchmark Score Matrix

—

Elo

High is better

1,248

EloHigh is better

1,490+19%

Code Elo

High is better

—

Code EloHigh is better

1,502

LiveBench

High is better

46.2%

LiveBenchHigh is better

66.8%+45%

SWE-bench

High is better

38.4%

SWE-benchHigh is better

72.5%+89%

GPQA

High is better

50.4%

GPQAHigh is better

80.4%+60%

TTFT

Low is better

420 ms

TTFTLow is better

390 ms+8%

Speed

High is better

48 tok/s

SpeedHigh is better

58 tok/s+21%

In $

Low is better

$15/1M

In $Low is better

$15/1M

Out $

Low is better

$75/1M

Out $Low is better

$75/1M

Context

High is better

200k

ContextHigh is better

200k

Interactive Simulator

Workload Cost & Savings Calculator

Simulate monthly production API costs based on published $/1M tokens.

Monthly Volume50M tokens/mo

Quick Presets:

Token Ratio (In vs Out)70% In / 30% Out

RAG / Search (10% out)Coding / Chat (50% out)

Claude 3 Opus$1,650.00 / mo

In: $525.00Out: $1125.00

Claude Opus 4$1,650.00 / mo

In: $525.00Out: $1125.00

Key Selection Recommendations

1
Claude Opus 4:Pick Claude Opus 4 when repo-level coding accuracy is the constraint.
2
Claude 3 Opus:Pick Claude 3 Opus when you are optimizing output cost.
3
Claude Opus 4:Pick Claude Opus 4 when time-to-first-token matters more than peak Elo.

Recommended Workload Routing

Repo / coding agentsClaude Opus 4

Higher SWE-bench (72.5%).

High-volume chatClaude 3 Opus

Lower output list price ($75/1M).

Voice / low-latency UIClaude Opus 4

Lower TTFT (390 ms).

Long-document RAGClaude 3 Opus

Larger window (200k).

Screenshots / visionClaude Opus 4

Both accept images. Defaulting to the higher-Elo side (Claude Opus 4).

Target Workload	Recommended Pick	Evaluation Rationale
Repo / coding agents	Claude Opus 4	Higher SWE-bench (72.5%).
High-volume chat	Claude 3 Opus	Lower output list price ($75/1M).
Voice / low-latency UI	Claude Opus 4	Lower TTFT (390 ms).
Long-document RAG	Claude 3 Opus	Larger window (200k).
Screenshots / vision	Claude Opus 4	Both accept images. Defaulting to the higher-Elo side (Claude Opus 4).

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LIVE

Anthropic

Claude 3 Opus

Elo 1,248

LiveBench46.2%

SWE-bench38.4%

Speed48 tok/s

Output cost$75/1M

Anthropic

Claude Opus 4

Elo 1,490

LiveBench66.8%

SWE-bench72.5%

Speed58 tok/s

Output cost$75/1M

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better overall, Claude 3 Opus or Claude Opus 4?: Claude Opus 4 has the higher preference Elo in our latest snapshot (1,490). “Better” still depends on coding, price, and latency — see the table.
Which is better at coding, Claude 3 Opus or Claude Opus 4?: Claude Opus 4 leads SWE-bench at 72.5% vs 38.4%. SWE-bench is one harness, not your repo.
Which is cheaper to run in production?: Claude 3 Opus output tokens are $75/1M versus $75/1M. Input prices and retry rates still move the real bill.
Which is faster, Claude 3 Opus or Claude Opus 4?: Claude Opus 4 has the lower time-to-first-token (390 ms vs 420 ms). Tokens/sec is a separate column if you care about long completions.
Which has the larger context window?: Claude 3 Opus accepts 200k tokens versus 200k.
Can I self-host either model?: Neither model is marked open-weights here. You are comparing hosted APIs.
Are these scores from CompareLLM’s own evals?: No. V1 aggregates public leaderboards (and optional first-party latency pings). Each cell names its source and date. Read /methodology.
What does preference Elo mean on this page?: Preference Elo is a crowd vote from LMArena / Arena. People see two hidden answers and pick the one they like more. The model that wins more often gets a higher Elo. That means people preferred it — not that it passed a school test. It is not SWE-bench, not accuracy, and not a number we invent. Claude 3 Opus and Claude Opus 4 Elo cells are dated snapshots from the named source — we do not compute Arena ourselves.

Similar Head-to-Head Comparisons

All Claude 3 Opus matchups →|All Claude Opus 4 matchups →

Claude Opus 4 vs Claude Opus 4.5 (next opus)Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Opus 4 Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Claude Opus 4 Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Opus 4 Claude Fable 5 vs Claude Opus 4 Claude Opus 4.8 vs Claude Opus 4

Claude 3 Opus vs Claude Opus 4 benchmark

Interactive Comparison Diagram

Matchup Breakdown

Tug-of-War Matchup Matrix

Category wins across intelligence, speed, and pricing efficiency.

Claude 3 Opus (0)vsClaude Opus 4 (7)

Claude 3 Opus: 0W (0%)Overall: Claude Opus 4Claude Opus 4: 7W (100%)

← Claude 3 Opus3 tiesClaude Opus 4 →

Claude Opus 4 (5/5)

Intelligence & Reasoning

Preference Elo, Coding proficiency, SWE-bench & LiveBench accuracy

Preference Elo

1,248vs1,490

Coding Elo

—vs1,502

SWE-bench

38.4%vs72.5%

LiveBench

46.2%vs66.8%

GPQA Diamond

50.4%vs80.4%

Claude 3 Opus: 0WClaude Opus 4: 5W

Claude Opus 4 (2/2)

Speed & Latency

Generation throughput and time to first token responsiveness

Output speed

48 tok/svs58 tok/s

Time to first token

420 msvs390 ms

Claude 3 Opus: 0WClaude Opus 4: 2W

Tied (0/3)

Pricing & Capacity

Cost per million tokens and max context window length

Output price

$75/1Mvs$75/1M

Input price

$15/1Mvs$15/1M

Context window

200kvs200k

Claude 3 Opus: 0WClaude Opus 4: 0W

Recommended Workload Routing

Repo / coding agentsClaude Opus 4

Higher SWE-bench (72.5%).

High-volume chatClaude 3 Opus

Lower output list price ($75/1M).

Voice / low-latency UIClaude Opus 4

Lower TTFT (390 ms).

Long-document RAGClaude 3 Opus

Larger window (200k).

Screenshots / visionClaude Opus 4

Both accept images. Defaulting to the higher-Elo side (Claude Opus 4).

Target Workload	Recommended Pick	Evaluation Rationale
Repo / coding agents	Claude Opus 4	Higher SWE-bench (72.5%).
High-volume chat	Claude 3 Opus	Lower output list price ($75/1M).
Voice / low-latency UI	Claude Opus 4	Lower TTFT (390 ms).
Long-document RAG	Claude 3 Opus	Larger window (200k).
Screenshots / vision	Claude Opus 4	Both accept images. Defaulting to the higher-Elo side (Claude Opus 4).

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better overall, Claude 3 Opus or Claude Opus 4?

Claude Opus 4 has the higher preference Elo in our latest snapshot (1,490). “Better” still depends on coding, price, and latency — see the table.

Which is better at coding, Claude 3 Opus or Claude Opus 4?

Claude Opus 4 leads SWE-bench at 72.5% vs 38.4%. SWE-bench is one harness, not your repo.

Which is cheaper to run in production?

Claude 3 Opus output tokens are $75/1M versus $75/1M. Input prices and retry rates still move the real bill.

Which is faster, Claude 3 Opus or Claude Opus 4?

Claude Opus 4 has the lower time-to-first-token (390 ms vs 420 ms). Tokens/sec is a separate column if you care about long completions.

Which has the larger context window?

Claude 3 Opus accepts 200k tokens versus 200k.

Can I self-host either model?

Neither model is marked open-weights here. You are comparing hosted APIs.

Are these scores from CompareLLM’s own evals?

No. V1 aggregates public leaderboards (and optional first-party latency pings). Each cell names its source and date. Read /methodology.

What does preference Elo mean on this page?

Preference Elo is a crowd vote from LMArena / Arena. People see two hidden answers and pick the one they like more. The model that wins more often gets a higher Elo. That means people preferred it — not that it passed a school test. It is not SWE-bench, not accuracy, and not a number we invent. Claude 3 Opus and Claude Opus 4 Elo cells are dated snapshots from the named source — we do not compute Arena ourselves.