Claude Haiku 4.5 vs Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Haiku 4.5

Anthropic

Claude Haiku 4.5, released by Anthropic in October 2025, is a fast, efficient large language model from the Claude 4.5 family optimized for high-throughput, low-latency workloads. It features a 200K token context window, 64K maximum output tokens, native image understanding, and extended thinking capabilities. Haiku 4.5 targets latency-sensitive applications such as real-time assistants, document classification, and lightweight agentic tasks where rapid response times are a primary requirement.

Claude Opus 4.6

Anthropic

Claude Opus 4.6, released by Anthropic in February 2026, is a large language model from the Claude 4 family designed for complex agent orchestration, extended reasoning, and long-form code generation. It features a 200K token context window (extendable to 1M tokens in beta), 128K maximum output tokens, native image understanding, and extended thinking with both standard and adaptive effort modes. Opus 4.6 targets multi-step agentic workflows, parallel tool use, and applications requiring sustained reasoning over large contexts.