Claude 3 Opus vs Claude Opus 4.8
How do these models stack up? Below is an expert side-by-side comparison of specifications, context window capacity, live pricing per million tokens, and standardized benchmark scores for Claude 3 Opus and Claude Opus 4.8.
Claude 3 Opus
Claude 3 Opus is Anthropic's most powerful model from the first Claude 3 generation, engineered for deep analysis, comprehensive research, and demanding multi-step task execution. Released in March 2024, it represented the frontier of Anthropic's capabilities at the time, with a 200,000-token context window suitable for processing large documents, synthesizing diverse research sources, and generating expert-level written content. Priced at $15/MTok for input, Claude 3 Opus remains available for teams with specific requirements for Claude 3-generation behavior, though most use cases are better served by the improved Claude 4 series.
Claude Opus 4.8
Claude Opus 4.8 is Anthropic's most capable generally available model in the Opus family. It supports text, image, and file inputs with text output, with reasoning support and a 1M-token...
Technical Specifications
| Specification | Claude 3 Opus | Claude Opus 4.8 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Context Window | 200,000 tokens | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Agent Suitability | N/A | 97/100 |
| Time to First Token (TTFT) | N/A | 520 ms |
| Deployment Model | N/A | managed api |
| Production Stability | stable | beta |
| API Available | Yes | Yes |
| Released Date | 2024-03-04 | 2026-05-27 |
API Pricing Comparison
Input Price per Million Tokens
Claude 3 Opus
$15.00
Claude Opus 4.8
$5.00
Output Price per Million Tokens
Claude 3 Opus
$75.00
Claude Opus 4.8
$25.00
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Benchmark Performance Metrics
Scores show the raw performance percentages verified across key evaluation suites. Higher bars indicate superior accuracy and capability in that domain.
Claude 3 Opus Quirks & Gotchas
No developer gotchas reported.
Claude Opus 4.8 Quirks & Gotchas
- ▸Best-in-class for autonomous code repair and multi-agent orchestration
- ▸Preview model — API may introduce breaking changes without notice