Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.5 on November 24, 2025, marking its third major model launch in just two months. This flagship AI model delivers breakthrough performance in coding, AI agents, and computer use while slashing prices by 67% compared to its predecessor. The release completes Anthropic's three-model family alongside Sonnet 4.5 and Haiku 4.5, offering developers and enterprises a complete toolkit for AI-powered workflows.

Claude Opus 4.5 arrives at a critical moment in the AI industry. Google launched Gemini 3 Pro just days earlier, and OpenAI responded with GPT-5.1-Codex-Max. This rapid-fire competition pushes AI capabilities forward at an unprecedented pace. For businesses and developers evaluating AI solutions, understanding what Claude Opus 4.5 offers—and whether it justifies the cost—becomes essential for staying competitive.

Here's what you need to know:

What Is Claude Opus 4.5?

Claude Opus 4.5 is Anthropic's most intelligent AI model designed for complex coding tasks, multi-step reasoning, and enterprise workflows. It sits at the top of Anthropic's model hierarchy, handling the hardest reasoning problems and longest-running tasks that require sustained accuracy over hours or days.

The model uses a hybrid reasoning architecture that combines direct inference with extended chain-of-thought processing. It supports a 200,000 token context window and can generate up to 64,000 tokens in a single response. With a knowledge cutoff of March 2025, it has the most current training data among Claude models.

Key specifications:

• Context window: 200,000 tokens (approximately 150,000 words)
• Output limit: 64,000 tokens per response
• Knowledge cutoff: March 2025
• Architecture: Hybrid reasoning with adjustable effort levels
• Availability: Claude API, Amazon Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, Microsoft Foundry, GitHub Copilot

Pricing and Cost Comparison

Claude Opus 4.5 dramatically reduces costs compared to previous Opus models while maintaining competitive pricing in the market:

Additional cost savings:

• Prompt caching: Up to 90% cost reduction for repeated content
• Batch processing: 50% discount for non-urgent requests
• Effort parameter: Control token usage with low, medium, or high settings

For subscription users, Claude Opus 4.5 is available through Pro ($17-20/month), Max ($100/month), Team ($30/user/month), and Enterprise plans. Max subscribers receive generous Opus 4.5 access with roughly the same token allocation previously provided for Sonnet 4.5.

The pricing positions Claude Opus 4.5 between budget options like GPT-5.1 and the expensive previous Opus generation, making frontier intelligence accessible for more use cases.

Performance Benchmarks

Claude Opus 4.5 achieves state-of-the-art results across multiple benchmarks, particularly excelling in software engineering and coding tasks:

Software Engineering Performance

SWE-bench Verified tests real-world software engineering tasks from GitHub repositories. Claude Opus 4.5's 80.9% score represents the highest performance recorded, demonstrating superior ability to resolve actual bugs and implement features.

Terminal-Bench evaluates command-line proficiency. The model's 59.3% score significantly outperforms competitors, showing strong capabilities in developer environments.

Reasoning and Intelligence

ARC-AGI-2 measures abstract reasoning and fluid intelligence. Claude Opus 4.5's 37.6% score more than doubles GPT-5.1's performance, demonstrating superior problem-solving abilities for novel challenges.

Humanity's Last Exam pushes AI to the limits of human knowledge. Claude Opus 4.5's 43.2% score approaches Gemini 3 Pro's performance when given web search access.

Agent and Tool Use

Claude Opus 4.5 leads in agentic capabilities:

• τ2-bench (Multi-turn tasks): State-of-the-art performance
• Scaled Tool Use: 62.3% vs 43.8% for next best model
• Vending-Bench (Long-term consistency): 29% improvement over Sonnet 4.5

These benchmarks test how well models maintain goals across complex, multi-step workflows involving multiple tools and extended reasoning sessions.

Efficiency Gains

The model achieves superior results while using significantly fewer tokens:

• Medium effort setting: Matches Sonnet 4.5 performance using 76% fewer output tokens
• High effort setting: Exceeds Sonnet 4.5 by 4.3 percentage points while using 48% fewer tokens

This efficiency translates to lower costs and faster responses for production applications.

Core Features and Capabilities

Advanced Coding Abilities

Claude Opus 4.5 excels at professional software development:

Code generation and refactoring - The model writes production-quality code across eight programming languages. It scored highest on SWE-bench Multilingual in seven out of eight languages tested. Developers report 50-75% reductions in both tool calling errors and build/lint errors compared to other models.

Long-horizon autonomous coding - Unlike models that require frequent guidance, Claude Opus 4.5 handles complex projects spanning hours or days. It maintains context across entire codebases, tracks architectural requirements, and makes consistent decisions throughout extended sessions.

Code migration and modernization - The model understands legacy systems and modernizes them effectively. It analyzes existing code, plans migration strategies, and executes changes while maintaining functionality and improving architecture.

Early testing shows Claude Opus 4.5 consistently finishes complex tasks in fewer iterations with more reliable execution. One developer used it to refactor an entire project, resulting in 20 commits, 39 files changed, 2,022 additions, and 1,173 deletions over a two-day period.

AI Agent Capabilities

Claude Opus 4.5 represents a breakthrough in AI agents:

Multi-tool orchestration - The model seamlessly coordinates hundreds of tools in complex workflows. It excels at workflows requiring 10+ tools, such as end-to-end software engineering, cybersecurity operations, and financial analysis.

Self-improving agents - Claude Opus 4.5 demonstrates the ability to autonomously refine its own capabilities. In testing by Rakuten, agents achieved peak performance in just 4 iterations, while other models couldn't match that quality after 10 attempts.

Sustained reasoning - The model maintains focus and accuracy through 30-minute autonomous coding sessions. It handles multi-step tasks with fewer dead-ends and stays on track over extended workflows.

Context management - Automatic summarization prevents context limits from interrupting long-running tasks. The model maintains consistency across files and sessions, essential for sprawling professional projects.

Enhanced Computer Use

Claude Opus 4.5 introduces improved computer control capabilities:

Zoom action - The model can request zoomed-in views of specific screen regions. This allows detailed inspection of fine-grained UI elements, small text, and visual information that might be unclear in standard screenshots.

Browser automation - Through Claude for Chrome, the model accesses the browser's Document Object Model. It reads documentation, navigates multi-step flows, fills forms, and connects disparate web interfaces.

Desktop automation - The model automates complex desktop tasks with improved reliability. It reaches 66.3% on OSWorld, the highest computer use benchmark score recorded.

Office Productivity

Claude Opus 4.5 delivers step-change improvements for knowledge workers:

Spreadsheet capabilities - Through Claude for Excel, the model understands and edits spreadsheets, creates pivot tables, uploads files, and generates charts. It maintains context across complex financial models and data analysis tasks.

Presentation and document creation - The model matches or exceeds previous Opus versions for creating slides, documents, and visual content. It leverages memory to maintain consistency across files in long-term projects.

Deep research - Performance on deep research evaluations increased by approximately 15%. The model synthesizes information across multiple sources, maintaining coherent analysis through extended research sessions.

Effort Parameter Control

Claude Opus 4.5 is the only Claude model supporting the effort parameter:

Low effort - Faster responses using fewer tokens, suitable for straightforward tasks Medium effort - Balanced performance matching Sonnet 4.5 quality while using 76% fewer tokens High effort - Maximum capability, exceeding Sonnet 4.5 while still using 48% fewer tokens

This granular control allows developers to balance performance, latency, and cost based on specific use cases.

Safety and Security

Claude Opus 4.5 achieves the highest resistance to prompt injection attacks among frontier models. Prompt injection attempts to smuggle deceptive instructions that trick the model into harmful behavior. The improved robustness makes Claude Opus 4.5 more reliable for production deployments handling sensitive data or critical workflows.

Real-World Applications

Software Development

Professional developers use Claude Opus 4.5 for:

• Full-stack application development with consistent architecture decisions
• Large-scale code refactoring across entire projects
• Code migration from legacy systems to modern frameworks
• Test coverage improvement and quality assurance
• Technical documentation and API design

GitHub Copilot integrates Claude Opus 4.5 for heavy-duty agentic workflows, with early testing showing it surpasses internal coding benchmarks while cutting token usage in half.

Enterprise Operations

Knowledge workers apply Claude Opus 4.5 to:

• Financial modeling and analysis
• Contract review and information extraction
• Regulatory compliance document processing
• Multi-channel marketing campaign management
• Cross-functional workflow orchestration

The model handles tasks from entry-level analysis to advanced predictive modeling, maintaining context across complex professional projects.

Cybersecurity

Security teams leverage Claude Opus 4.5 for:

• Threat analysis and vulnerability assessment
• Security policy enforcement across complex systems
• Incident response automation
• Code security review and penetration testing
• Multi-tool security workflows

The model's resistance to prompt injection makes it particularly suitable for security-critical applications.

Research and Analysis

Researchers use Claude Opus 4.5 for:

• Literature review and synthesis across multiple papers
• Data analysis with statistical reasoning
• Hypothesis generation and testing
• Long-form report generation
• Multi-source information verification

The model maintains analytical rigor through extended research sessions, approaching problems adaptively rather than following rigid scripts.

Comparison with Competing Models

Claude Opus 4.5 vs GPT-5.1

Coding: Claude Opus 4.5 leads on SWE-bench Verified (80.9% vs 76.3%) and shows stronger performance in autonomous coding sessions.

Pricing: GPT-5.1 is significantly cheaper ($1.25/$10 vs $5/$25), making it more cost-effective for high-volume applications.

Reasoning: Claude Opus 4.5 more than doubles GPT-5.1's score on ARC-AGI-2 (37.6% vs 17.6%), demonstrating superior abstract reasoning.

Best for: Claude Opus 4.5 excels at complex agentic workflows and production code. GPT-5.1 offers better value for simpler tasks at scale.

Claude Opus 4.5 vs Gemini 3 Pro

Coding: Claude Opus 4.5 outperforms on SWE-bench Verified (80.9% vs 76.2%), showing stronger software engineering capabilities.

Knowledge: Gemini 3 Pro leads on knowledge-intensive benchmarks like MMMLU (91.8% vs 90.8%) and performs slightly better on Humanity's Last Exam.

Pricing: Gemini 3 Pro is cheaper ($2/$12 vs $5/$25) for standard context. Extended context pricing narrows the gap.

Best for: Claude Opus 4.5 for coding and agentic tasks. Gemini 3 Pro for knowledge-intensive applications and multilingual work.

Claude Opus 4.5 vs Claude Sonnet 4.5

Performance: Opus 4.5 exceeds Sonnet 4.5 across all benchmarks, particularly in complex reasoning and long-running tasks.

Efficiency: Even at medium effort, Opus 4.5 matches Sonnet 4.5 quality while using 76% fewer tokens.

Pricing: Sonnet 4.5 costs 40% less ($3/$15 vs $5/$25), making it more economical for routine work.

Best for: Use Opus 4.5 when tasks require maximum capability or have failed with Sonnet. Use Sonnet 4.5 for everyday productivity and scaled deployments.

Integration and Availability

API Access

Developers access Claude Opus 4.5 through the Claude API using the model identifier claude-opus-4-5-20251101.

Key API features:

• Effort parameter control (low, medium, high)
• Prompt caching for cost savings
• Batch processing for non-urgent requests
• Extended context window management
• Tool use and function calling

Cloud Platform Integration

Claude Opus 4.5 is available on all major cloud platforms:

Amazon Bedrock - Fully managed deployment with AgentCore for building production agents. Includes Tool Gateway for converting APIs to agent-compatible tools, persistent memory across sessions, and CloudWatch integration for monitoring.

Microsoft Foundry - Available in public preview with integration into GitHub Copilot paid plans and Microsoft Copilot Studio. Provides centralized governance, security, and observability at scale.

Google Vertex AI - Global and regional endpoint options with choice of routing strategies for availability versus data residency requirements.

Developer Tools

Claude Code - Now available in the desktop app with improved planning mode. Creates more precise plans and executes them thoroughly, with support for background execution on long-running tasks.

Claude for Chrome - Browser extension available to all Max subscribers. Allows Claude to take action across browser tabs, navigate web applications, and automate multi-step workflows.

Claude for Excel - Generally available to Max, Team, and Enterprise users. Supports pivot tables, file uploads, chart creation, and complex spreadsheet operations.

Common Use Cases and Best Practices

When to Use Claude Opus 4.5

Choose Claude Opus 4.5 for:

• Tasks that failed with Sonnet 4.5 or other models
• Production code requiring maximum reliability
• Complex multi-tool workflows spanning hours
• Autonomous agents operating with minimal oversight
• Projects where accuracy outweighs speed and cost
• Long-running tasks requiring sustained reasoning

When to Use Alternatives

Choose Claude Sonnet 4.5 for:

• Everyday coding and productivity tasks
• High-volume API calls requiring cost efficiency
• Rapid iteration and testing cycles
• Medium-complexity analytical work
• Scaled user-facing applications

Choose Claude Haiku 4.5 for:

• Simple, repetitive tasks
• Sub-agents in multi-agent systems
• Free-tier products and services
• Speed-critical applications
• High-volume, low-complexity workflows

Optimization Strategies

Leverage the effort parameter - Start with medium effort to match Sonnet quality while using 76% fewer tokens. Increase to high effort only for tasks requiring maximum capability.

Use prompt caching - For workflows with repeated context, prompt caching can reduce costs by up to 90%.

Batch similar tasks - Batch processing provides 50% cost savings for non-urgent requests.

Monitor token usage - Track input and output tokens to identify optimization opportunities. The model's efficiency means you may use fewer tokens than expected.

Combine models strategically - Use Opus 4.5 for critical-path reasoning and Sonnet 4.5 for bulk tasks within the same workflow.

Limitations and Considerations

Cost at Scale

While 67% cheaper than Claude Opus 4.1, Claude Opus 4.5 remains more expensive than Sonnet 4.5 (40% cost difference) and significantly pricier than GPT-5.1 (80% cost difference) and Gemini 3 Pro (60% cost difference). Organizations processing millions of tokens daily should carefully evaluate whether the performance improvements justify the additional cost.

Knowledge Gaps

Despite a March 2025 knowledge cutoff (the most recent among Claude models), Gemini 3 Pro outperforms on some knowledge-intensive benchmarks. For applications requiring broad multilingual knowledge or specific domain expertise, comparative testing is recommended.

Benchmark Limitations

Benchmarks don't always reflect real-world performance. While Claude Opus 4.5 leads on coding benchmarks, actual project success depends on factors like requirements understanding, communication, and collaboration—areas benchmarks don't measure.

Context Window Management

Even with 200,000 token capacity, very large projects may require careful context management. The model's automatic summarization helps, but developers should design agents to handle context limits gracefully.

Getting Started

For Developers

1. Sign up for API access at claude.ai/developers
2. Review the documentation at docs.claude.com
3. Start with small tests to understand model behavior
4. Experiment with effort levels to find the right balance
5. Implement prompt caching for repeated content
6. Monitor costs closely during initial development

For Business Users

1. Choose a subscription plan based on usage needs (Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise)
2. Start with Claude for Chrome to automate browser workflows
3. Explore Claude for Excel for spreadsheet automation
4. Test deep research capabilities for competitive analysis
5. Evaluate ROI on manual processes that could be automated
6. Consider enterprise deployment for organization-wide access

For Teams

1. Define use cases where maximum AI capability adds value
2. Establish governance for model selection (when to use Opus vs Sonnet)
3. Integrate with existing tools through API or cloud platforms
4. Train team members on effective prompting and agent design
5. Measure performance against business objectives
6. Scale gradually from pilot projects to production deployments

The Future of Claude Opus

Anthropic's rapid release pace—three major models in two months—signals an intensifying AI race. Claude Opus 4.5's combination of superior coding performance, aggressive pricing, and breakthrough agent capabilities positions Anthropic as a serious competitor to OpenAI and Google.

The model's ability to beat human engineers on internal assessments raises important questions about AI's impact on professional work. While the model doesn't possess collaboration skills or years of experience, its technical performance on pure capability tests signals a shift in how AI systems contribute to complex projects.

For developers and enterprises, Claude Opus 4.5 offers a compelling option: state-of-the-art intelligence at one-third the previous Opus cost. Whether it becomes the go-to model for your use case depends on your specific requirements, budget, and the value of maximum AI capability for your workflows.

As the AI landscape continues evolving at breakneck speed, one thing remains clear: the frontier is moving fast, and Claude Opus 4.5 marks another significant leap forward in what AI systems can accomplish.

Key Takeaways

• Claude Opus 4.5 achieves 80.9% on SWE-bench Verified, outperforming all competing models in software engineering tasks
• Pricing dropped 67% to $5/$25 per million tokens, making frontier intelligence more accessible
• The model excels at agentic workflows, with state-of-the-art tool use and 30-minute autonomous coding sessions
• Available across all major platforms: Claude API, Amazon Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, Microsoft Foundry, and GitHub Copilot
• Effort parameter provides granular control, allowing developers to balance performance, speed, and cost
• Best for complex production work where maximum capability justifies higher costs compared to Sonnet 4.5
• Rapid innovation pace with three major releases in two months signals intensifying AI competition