Claude Opus 4.5: A Deep Dive into Anthropic’s New AI Powerhouse
Anthropic has officially launched Claude Opus 4.5, its latest flagship AI model. This new release is engineered to be a dominant force in the world of artificial intelligence, with a specific focus on coding, creating agents, and performing real-world computer use tasks. Let’s break down what this powerful new model brings to the table, from its performance benchmarks to its surprisingly accessible pricing.
A New Era of Affordability and Performance
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Anthropic’s latest release, Claude Opus 4.5, is positioned as a direct competitor to Google’s Gemini 3 Pro. The model is not just powerful but also significantly more cost-effective. Anthropic has drastically reduced the pricing to make this high-end model more accessible for developers and enterprises.
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One of the most significant updates is the new pricing structure. The cost is now $5 for input and $25 for output per million tokens. This is a massive price drop compared to the previous Opus model, which cost $15 for input and $75 for output.
This new pricing makes the Opus-level capabilities much more accessible and cost-friendly, allowing for its use in daily tasks without breaking the bank—if your budget allows. This move suggests Anthropic is committed to providing powerful, low-cost, and genuinely usable AI solutions.
Impressive Benchmark Results
Anthropic’s announcement is backed by a series of impressive benchmark scores, showcasing Opus 4.5’s superiority in various domains, especially in coding and agentic tasks.
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On the Aider Polyglot benchmark for coding problems, Opus 4.5 achieves a remarkable score of 89.4%, a significant jump from Sonnet 4.5’s 78.8%. This demonstrates a clear improvement in its ability to handle complex, multilingual coding challenges.
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In agentic coding, measured by the SWE-bench Verified benchmark, Opus 4.5 leads with a score of 80.9%. It outperforms its predecessor, Opus 4.1 (74.5%), and the more recent Sonnet 4.5 (77.2%), establishing a new state-of-the-art performance for real-world software engineering tests.
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The improvements continue with agentic terminal coding. On Terminal-bench 2.0, Opus 4.5 scores 59.3%, a substantial leap from the 46.5% achieved by Opus 4.1. This highlights its enhanced ability to interact with and perform tasks within a terminal environment.
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When it comes to multilingual coding, Opus 4.5 demonstrates strong performance across seven out of eight programming languages, including C, Go, Java, JS/TS, PHP, Ruby, and Rust. The model consistently leads over both Sonnet 4.5 and Opus 4.1, showcasing its robust and versatile coding capabilities.
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Long-term coherence is another area where Opus 4.5 excels. In the Vending-Bench test, it shows a 29% improvement over Sonnet 4.5, indicating its ability to stay on track and maintain context over extended and complex tasks.
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For tasks involving deep research agents, Opus 4.5 improves on frontier agentic search with a significant jump on the BrowseComp-Plus benchmark. It scores 72.9%, compared to Sonnet 4.5’s 67.2%, particularly when implemented with tool result clearing and memory tools.
A Step Forward in Safety and Robustness
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Anthropic has also prioritized safety. The “concerning behavior” score for Opus 4.5 is the lowest among all models tested, dropping to roughly 10%. This suggests it is more robustly aligned and less prone to generating misaligned or undesirable actions.
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Furthermore, Opus 4.5 is harder to trick with prompt injection attacks than any other frontier model in the industry. It has the lowest attack success rate, making it a more secure and reliable choice for critical tasks.
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Real-World Performance on KingBench
Beyond the official benchmarks, let’s see how Claude Opus 4.5 performs on a series of practical, real-world tests from KingBench.
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The first task was to create a 3D floor plan. The result is functional and makes sense, but it’s not the most polished or aesthetically pleasing output.
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Next, the model was asked to generate an SVG of a panda holding a burger. The result was quite basic and highlights a potential weakness in generating high-quality, detailed vector graphics.
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The model redeemed itself by creating a Pokeball in Three.js. The 3D model is well-executed and interactive, demonstrating strong capabilities with 3D graphics libraries.
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One of the most impressive results was a web version of 3D Minecraft with Kandinsky-style textures. The model generated a fully interactive world with trees and smooth terrain, showcasing an advanced understanding of game development concepts.
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Another standout was a simulation of a majestic butterfly flying in a garden. The physics, animation, and overall scene composition were highly realistic and one-shotted by the model, proving its strength in complex, creative coding tasks.
Agentic Capabilities: Topping the Leaderboard
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When tested on agentic benchmarks with Kilo Code, Claude Opus 4.5 truly shines. It successfully built a complete Expo mobile movie tracker app, flawlessly integrating the TMDB API and delivering a polished user interface.
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The model also nailed the creation of a Go-based terminal calculator using the bubbletea library. The result was not only functional but also visually appealing for a terminal application.
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These outstanding performances in agentic tasks have placed Opus 4.5 at the #1 position on the agentic leaderboard. It achieved an average score of 77.1%, surpassing competitors like Gemini-3-Pro-Preview. However, this top-tier performance comes at a cost. The tests cost around $48, significantly more than the $8 for Gemini 3, which scored a respectable 71.4%.
For those with no cap on costs who want the absolute best results, Opus is surely the way to go. It represents a true leap in performance, especially for backend development and debugging.
Final Verdict
Claude Opus 4.5 is an astonishingly powerful model that sets a new standard for agentic coding tasks. While it still has room for improvement in frontend UI generation compared to Gemini 3, its capabilities in backend logic, complex simulations, and CLI tools are second to none. The new, lower price point makes it a more viable option, though it remains a premium choice. For developers looking to push the boundaries of what’s possible with AI, Claude Opus 4.5 is an exciting and powerful new tool in the arsenal.