Anthropic has officially released Claude Opus 4.5, its most intelligent and efficient AI model to date, designed to outperform competitors in coding and complex reasoning tasks. This new flagship model excels in every human engineering test on benchmarks like SWE-bench Verified. It also introduces a revolutionary pricing structure that cuts costs by roughly 67% compared to the earlier generation.
With features like the new ‘effort parameter’ and deep integration with platforms like GitHub Copilot, Opus 4.5 positions itself as the ultimate tool for agentic workflows and heavy-duty software engineering.
3 Key Takeaways
- Coding Supremacy: Opus 4.5 achieves an 80.9% score on SWE-bench Verified, outperforming rivals like Gemini 3 Pro and GPT-5.1 in autonomous software engineering.
- Massive Price Drop: The model costs $5 per million input tokens, a 67% reduction from the earlier Opus 4.1 pricing, making frontier intelligence accessible for broader applications.
- Agentic Capabilities: Anthropic claims Opus 4.5 is the “best model in the world for computer use.” It can navigate websites and click buttons to automate complex office tasks.
Claude Opus 4.5 Benchmarks and Coding Mastery
Breaking Engineering Records
Claude Opus 4.5 has set a new standard for AI coding, achieving a score of 80.9% on SWE-bench Verified, a rigorous test that evaluates an AI’s ability to solve real-world GitHub issues. This performance surpasses all major competitors, including Google’s Gemini 3 Pro and OpenAI’s GPT-5.1, cementing its status as the leading model for software engineering tasks.
Industry Endorsements
Major tech players are already validating these capabilities. Mario Rodriguez, Chief Product Officer at GitHub, noted the model’s efficiency in real-world environments.
“Claude Opus 4.5 delivers high-quality code and excels at powering heavy-duty agentic workflows with GitHub Copilot. Early testing shows it surpasses internal coding benchmarks while cutting token usage in half, and is especially well-suited for tasks like code migration and code refactoring.”
— Mario Rodriguez, Chief Product Officer, GitHub [Source: FinalRoundai]
A New Era of Pricing: 67% Cheaper
Strategic Repositioning
Historically, the ‘Opus’ tier was reserved for only the most expensive, high-stakes tasks. Still, Opus 4.5 signifies a fundamental shift in economics, priced at $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens. This creates a 67% cost reduction compared to the earlier Opus 4.1 generation, which was reportedly priced around $15/$75.
Efficiency at Scale
The cost savings are compounded by the model’s efficiency. Michele Catasta, President of Replit, highlighted this advantage:
“Claude Opus 4.5 beats Sonnet 4.5 and competition on our internal benchmarks, using fewer tokens to solve the same problems. At scale, that efficiency compounds.”
— Michele Catasta, President, Replit [Source: FinalRoundai]
Effort Parameter: How Claude Opus 4.5 Puts Control Over Thought
Adjusting Response Depth
Opus 4.5 introduces a unique feature called the “effort parameter.” It is a single control that allows developers to adjust the model’s thoroughness. It also manages token consumption per call. This gives users the flexibility to choose between speed and deep reasoning depending on the complexity of the task.
Performance vs. Cost Trade-off
At a medium effort setting, the model matches the performance of the faster Sonnet 4.5 while using 76% fewer output tokens. When cranked to high effort, it exceeds Sonnet 4.5 by 4.3 percentage points while still consuming 48% fewer tokens, demonstrating that higher intelligence doesn’t always need more raw data generation.
Agentic AI: Computer Use and Automation using Claude Opus 4.5
Computer Use Capabilities
Anthropic has labeled Opus 4.5 as ‘the best model in the world for computer use.’ This means the AI isn’t just generating text. It can interact with software interfaces. It can click buttons, fill out forms, and navigate websites just like a human user would.
Self-Improving Agents
In internal tests for office task automation, Opus 4.5 agents demonstrated the ability to autonomously refine their own capabilities. They achieved peak performance in just 4 iterations, while other models could not match that quality even after 10 attempts.
“If Claude is writing 90% of the code, what that means, usually, is, you need just as many software engineers. You might need more, because they can then be more leverage.”
— Dario Amodei, CEO, Anthropic [Source: TheVerge]
Benchmark Dominance of Claude Opus 4.5: The Numbers Don’t Lie
Sweeping the Leaderboards
Software engineering isn’t the only area where Opus 4.5 shines; capabilities are higher across the board with better vision, reasoning, and mathematics skills than its predecessors. On the SWE-bench Multilingual test, Opus 4.5 writes better code, leading across 7 out of 8 programming languages tested.
Additionally, it shows a significant 10.6% jump over Sonnet 4.5 on Aider Polyglot, proving its ability to solve challenging coding problems with ease.
Long-Haul Reliability
On the Vending-Bench test, which measures an agent’s ability to stay on track over long durations, Opus 4.5 earned 29% more than Sonnet 4.5. This indicates a major leap in reliability for tasks that need sustained attention and multi-step execution without losing context.
Enterprise-Grade Safety of Claude Opus 4.5
Robust Against Attacks
Security is a top priority for enterprise adoption, and Opus 4.5 is described as the “most robustly aligned model” released to date. Anthropic’s internal testing shows that Opus 4.5 is harder to trick with prompt injection attacks. These are techniques used by hackers to smuggle deceptive instructions. Opus 4.5 is more difficult to fool than any other frontier model in the industry.
Minimizing Concerning Behavior
In evaluations measuring ‘concerning behavior,’ which includes cooperation with human misuse and undesirable independent actions, Opus 4.5 demonstrated significantly lower rates compared to earlier models. This makes it a safer choice for critical tasks where the AI must have the “street smarts” to avoid trouble.
Access and Integration: Where to Use Claude Opus 4.5
Major Cloud Platforms (Existing)
Claude Opus 4.5 is available now for enterprise users through major cloud platforms. It has launched on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI, allowing businesses to deploy the model within their existing secure infrastructure. It is also integrated into Microsoft Foundry, expanding its reach to Azure customers.
Amazon Bedrock (Cloud Partner):
Opus 4.5 is available in Amazon Bedrock, ensuring customers can access the frontier reasoning model across all three major cloud providers. This platform-agnostic availability ensures enterprises can access Claude regardless of their existing AWS infrastructure.
GitHub Copilot (IDE)
The model is in public preview for GitHub Copilot Chat across Copilot Pro, Business, and Enterprise tiers. Developers can select Claude Opus 4.5 directly within their primary tools like Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio to leverage its superior coding capabilities.
Snowflake Cortex AI (Data Platform)
Claude Opus 4.5 is now live within Snowflake Cortex AI. This allows organizations to run complex agentic workloads directly on their data. They can do this using simple SQL calls without exporting data. This integration is a non-trivial win for security, as compliance policies stay intact within Snowflake’s data perimeter.
Claude for Excel (Productivity Suite)
The dedicated Claude for Excel integration is available to Max, Team, and Enterprise users. It adds an AI sidebar that analyzes financial models. This feature creates pivot tables and charts. Early testing by Anthropic showed this integration delivers a 20% accuracy improvement and 15% efficiency gain when working with spreadsheets.
Community Reactions: The Developer Verdict
The “Wow” Factor
“Wow! Following my significant letdown with Gemini 3… Opus 4.5 truly astonished me. I tested it in Cursor on a substantial codebase… and it was impressively swift, highly precise, and remarkably effective. All I can express is ‘wow’.”
“One-Shot” Understanding
Other users are impressed by the model’s ability to grasp instructions without needing constant corrections.
“What instantly stood out is the understanding on the very first try. You don’t need to explain things repeatedly… It understands right away, and it delivers work that is clean, structured, coherent, and incredibly sharp.”
Unlocking New Potential
Some users feel the upgrade enables entirely new workflows rather than just speed improvements.
“people are doing things that weren’t possible before, not just faster versions of existing work.”
Mixed Feelings on Personality and Style
However, the “human-like” confidence has rubbed some users the wrong way, and others miss the absolute certainty of previous iterations.
“It just feels……bad, but like so confident in its self that it makes me angry trying to do anything with it.”
“Today Claude only tells me I’m right. But not absolutely right. Sometimes just “largely correct.” Once, devastatingly, “on the right track.” And this is degrading the hubris which prior model versions have worked hard to build in me…”
Action Points — How to use this information
- Test the Effort Parameter: If you have API access, try the “medium” and “high” effort settings. See how much token cost you can save. Make sure you do this without sacrificing quality.
- Deploy on Cloud: Enterprise users should look for Opus 4.5 on Google Vertex AI or Microsoft Azure to integrate it into secure business workflows.
- Use for Refactoring: Given its high benchmarks, try using Opus 4.5 specifically for heavy-duty code migration or refactoring tasks that usually require deep context.
- Automate UI Tasks: Explore the “Computer Use” capabilities. Check if the model can automate repetitive browser-based tasks. These tasks include form filling or data entry.
FAQs
- When was Opus 4.5 released?
Anthropic unveiled Claude Opus 4.5 on November 24, 2025.
- Can I use Claude Opus for free?
The Opus class models are typically reserved for paid “Pro” subscribers or API users. The official news emphasizes enterprise and API availability.
- Why is Opus so good?
It excels because it “thinks” more efficiently, achieving higher scores on coding benchmarks while using significantly fewer tokens than competitors.
- What is Claude Opus 4.5 price?
It is priced at $5/million input tokens and $25/million output tokens, a massive drop from the previous generation.
- How to get access to Claude Opus?
You can access it via the Anthropic API, Google Cloud Vertex AI, or Microsoft Azure Foundry.
- What is Claude used for?
It is used for complex reasoning, coding, creative writing, and now “agentic” tasks like controlling computer interfaces.
- Claude opus 4.5 vs gemini 3?
Opus 4.5 outperforms Gemini 3 Pro on key coding benchmarks like SWE-bench Verified.
- Is sonnet 4.5 available in Claude code?
The articles discuss Opus 4.5 comparing itself to Sonnet 4.5, implying both are part of the active model family.
- Claude opus 4.5 features explained ?
Key features include the “effort parameter,” “computer use” capability, and massive token efficiency.
- How to use Claude Oppus 4.5?
Developers can integrate it via API using the new effort headers to control cost and speed.
- What does Gemini 3 do?
It is a competitor model that Opus 4.5 reportedly beats in coding tasks.
- What is the context window (token limit) for Opus 4.5?
The standard context window for Claude Opus 4.5 is 200,000 tokens. However, a 1-million token context window is also available in beta for eligible organizations and certain API access tiers.
- Does Claude Opus 4.5 have vision or multimodal capabilities?
Yes, the model showcases substantial improvements in vision capabilities, along with enhanced reasoning and mathematics skills. It also includes enhanced “computer use excellence,” like a new zoom action for inspecting fine-grained screen regions at full resolution.
- Is Claude Opus 4.5 safer against prompt injection attacks?
Yes, Anthropic states that Opus 4.5 is harder to trick with prompt injection than any other frontier model in the industry. This progress makes it more robust for use in browser-based agentic systems.
- Can I use Opus 4.5 for deep research and analysis?
Yes, the model is meaningfully better at everyday tasks like deep research, working with slides and spreadsheets, and long-context storytelling. Its improved reasoning depth transforms planning and research workflows.
Further Reading
Official Sources:
- Anthropic News: Introducing Claude Opus 4.5
- Anthropic Docs: What’s New in Claude 4.5
- Google Cloud Blog: Claude Opus 4.5 on Vertex AI
- Microsoft Azure Blog: Claude Opus 4.5 in Microsoft Foundry
- Anthropic Product Page: Claude Opus
Check out our coverage on Anthropic products here:
- Make the Most of Claude File Creation Feature
- Claude Gov: Inside Anthropic AI for Defense + 6 Risks
- Best AI Browsers: Free Comparison Business Analysis Report
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