Real head-to-head · same prompt, one shot
Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Sonnet 5
The new Anthropic flagship — benched on all 45 one-shot builds the day it landed. vs The agentic SWE frontier — 82% SWE-bench Verified, Dev Team mode.
Head-to-head verdict: Claude Opus 5 wins 37–9 with 1 tie.
What I tested — same prompt, two models
I run the same fixed prompt set through every new model the day it drops — same string, one shot, single HTML file out — and I score the result 0–10 on whether it ran, how close it hit the brief, and how good it looked. Below is what came out when I gave the exact same prompts to Claude Opus 5 and Claude Sonnet 5, side by side, on 47 shared tasks inside the Agent Operating System.
Both models were given identical prompts inside the Agent Operating System — no help, no iteration, no "best of N" tricks. I run each prompt once, save the HTML file the model produces, and score it 0–10 on whether it ran, how close it hit the brief, and how good it looked. The scoring is mine. The verdicts below are pulled from my source comparison guides at agentos.guide where I publish every score and the reasoning behind it.
Claude Opus 5 · Benched on all 45 GoldieBench tasks via API on release day, incremental deploys as scores landed.
Claude Sonnet 5 · Reach for it in Agent OS when the job is iterative, tool-using software engineering. For one-shot visual builds, GLM 5.2 (free) beat it 4-1 here.
Side-by-side on 50 shared tasks
Click any cell to play that model's actual one-shot attempt. Medals are derived from my 0–10 scores per task (highest = 🥇, second = 🥈, third = 🥉).
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Claude Sonnet 5
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Where Claude Opus 5 beat Claude Sonnet 5
The tasks where I gave Claude Opus 5 a higher 0–10 score on the same prompt — with the actual commentary from my source guides.
Aurora
Visual
Claude Opus 5 8.6
·
Claude Sonnet 5 2.5
(+6.1)
· cinematic aurora scene
What I saw: Gorgeous WebGL curtains with realistic vertical streaks, layered mountains, starfield and water reflection make this a full cinematic scene; polished palette switcher and typography plus reflection depth push it past the field's best.
Solar
Sim
Claude Opus 5 8.6
·
Claude Sonnet 5 2.5
(+6.1)
· asteroid belt polish
What I saw: Strong 3D build: banded textured Sun with layered glow, all planets on inclined elliptical orbits, visible Earth+Moon, Saturn's rings, a convincing asteroid belt, plus real-data info panel and full follow/speed/scale controls. Minor knocks: labels are sparse (only some planets ta…
Wormhole
Sim
Claude Opus 5 8.8
·
Claude Sonnet 5 3.0
(+5.8)
· neon warp tunnel
What I saw: Stunning depth with concentric glowing rings receding to a bright core, layered wireframe mesh, colorful motes, and radiating light streaks — genuinely reads as a 3D wormhole flythrough with polished HUD; steering/warp/regenerate controls back it up. Top of the field.
Orbit
Sim
Claude Opus 5 9.0
·
Claude Sonnet 5 3.5
(+5.5)
· 3D N-body simulation
What I saw: Gorgeous 3D N-body sim with a glowing central star, 167 orbiting bodies with velocity trails, merges counter (12), tilted disks and companion cluster — genuine physics with softening, substeps, and merging, plus a polished camera/UI. Strong: visible dynamic simulation and beautif…
Twilightvale
Game
Claude Opus 5 7.3
·
Claude Sonnet 5 3.0
(+4.3)
What I saw: Polished twilight atmosphere with cohesive HUD, minimap with foe blips, weather particles, and a characterful sword-wielding hero, but the visible world is dominated by flat empty sandy terrain and no enemy is actually engaged in frame — combat is implied by the elite bar and que…
Where Claude Sonnet 5 beat Claude Opus 5
The tasks where I gave Claude Sonnet 5 a higher 0–10 score on the same prompt — with the actual commentary from my source guides.
Pool
Game
Claude Sonnet 5 8.2
·
Claude Opus 5 6.0
(+2.2)
What I saw: Clean 3D render with proper racked triangle, numbered/striped ball textures, cue stick aiming, pockets and power bar—clearly on-brief and polished. Solid physics-oriented setup but visually generic versus a task winner, and the shadowing under the rack looks a bit off.
Arcade
Game
Claude Sonnet 5 8.2
·
Claude Opus 5 6.5
(+1.7)
What I saw: Clean, polished neon Breakout that renders perfectly with glowing bricks, gradient paddle, particle bursts, and a live in-progress state (score 10, a brick already cleared). Solid physics with side-aware collisions and level scaling, but it's a well-executed take on the most comm…
Neonblaster
Game
Claude Sonnet 5 8.3
·
Claude Opus 5 6.8
(+1.5)
What I saw: Strong neon aesthetic with glowing nebulae, layered starfield, polished ship and auto-fire bullets, plus a full feature set (waves, bosses, power-ups, synth sequencer, screen-shake); the screenshot looks clean and on-brief but reads a touch sparse/quiet early on versus the flashi…
Doom
Game
Claude Sonnet 5 8.0
·
Claude Opus 5 6.8
(+1.2)
What I saw: Renders a clean raycaster maze with atmospheric red-lit walls, working minimap, HUD health/kills bar, crosshair and a monster visible at screen edge; solid feature set (hitscan shooting, chasing AI, damage flash, touch controls) makes it strong and shippable, though the wall shad…
Neoncity
Game
Claude Sonnet 5 8.2
·
Claude Opus 5 7.4
(+0.8)
What I saw: Strong on-brief cyberpunk drive: neon edge strips, cyan dashed lane markers, glowing windowed buildings and clean perspective read convincingly as a neon city. Weakness is the right side feels sparse and the buildings cluster asymmetrically, keeping it just shy of the best in field.
Strengths & weaknesses I logged
Claude Opus 5
Strengths
- Frontier-class coding + agentic reasoning (Claude 5 family)
- 1M-token context — reads an entire codebase in one call
- Benched here with skill-infused game prompts the day of release
Trade-offs
- Premium pricing ($5/$25 per M) — route the everyday 90% to cheaper lanes
- Reasoning-by-default eats token budgets unless tuned per call
Claude Sonnet 5
Strengths
- 82.1% SWE-bench Verified — first model past 80% on real GitHub-issue repair
- Dev Team multi-agent mode + 1M context for repo-level agentic work
- Precision on hard logic — won the raycaster the open-weight field kept botching
Trade-offs
- One-shot creative-visual builds trail GLM 5.2 here (lost 4 of 5) — no iteration to catch its own bugs
- A temporal-dead-zone bug blanked its N-body orbit sim on the first shot
Pricing & context — the spec sheet
| Spec | Claude Opus 5 | Claude Sonnet 5 |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Context window | 1,000,000 tokens | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Price | $5 / $25 per M | $3 / $15 per M ($2/$10 intro) |
| Pricing detail | Anthropic's brand-new flagship — the first Opus of the Claude 5 family, with a 1M-token context window. Benched via API the day it dropped; game tasks use our skill-infused AAA build prompts. | $3.00 input / $15.00 output per million tokens; introductory $2.00/$10.00 through 2026-08-31. |
| Release | 2026-07 | 2026-06-30 |
| Bench coverage | 50/50 scored · avg 8.27/10 | 47/47 scored · avg 7.01/10 |
The verdict — which should you pick?
Across 47 scored shared tasks, Claude Opus 5 averaged 8.29/10, beating Claude Sonnet 5's 7.01/10 by 1.27 points. Pick Claude Opus 5 when the build has to ship on the first prompt and you can afford the trade-offs in the comparison below.
If you only run one of these inside your stack, the head-to-head average above is the call. If you can run both, my honest play is to wire Claude Opus 5 and Claude Sonnet 5 both into the Agent Operating System and dispatch each from the kanban by task type — hardest agentic builds → Claude Opus 5, agentic software engineering — write / run / test / fix loops on real repos → Claude Sonnet 5. That's the same setup I run for the 4,000+ founders inside the AI Profit Boardroom.
FAQ — Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Sonnet 5
Which is better, Claude Opus 5 or Claude Sonnet 5?
On Goldie Bench, Claude Opus 5 averages 8.29/10 across the shared tasks, with 13 gold, 7 silver, 5 bronze overall. Claude Sonnet 5 averages 7.01/10, with 0 gold, 0 silver, 4 bronze. Claude Opus 5 wins the head-to-head 37–9.
How much does Claude Opus 5 cost vs Claude Sonnet 5?
Claude Opus 5: Anthropic's brand-new flagship — the first Opus of the Claude 5 family, with a 1M-token context window. Benched via API the day it dropped; game tasks use our skill-infused AAA build prompts. Claude Sonnet 5: $3.00 input / $15.00 output per million tokens; introductory $2.00/$10.00 through 2026-08-31.
What's the context window for Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Sonnet 5?
Claude Opus 5 has a 1,000,000 tokens context window. Claude Sonnet 5 has a 1,000,000 tokens context window.
When should I pick Claude Opus 5 over Claude Sonnet 5?
Pick Claude Opus 5 for: Hardest agentic builds; Whole-repo reasoning; Frontier one-shots. The trade-off is the weaknesses we logged on the bench: Premium pricing ($5/$25 per M) — route the everyday 90% to cheaper lanes; Reasoning-by-default eats token budgets unless tuned per call.
When should I pick Claude Sonnet 5 over Claude Opus 5?
Pick Claude Sonnet 5 for: Agentic software engineering — write / run / test / fix loops on real repos; Repo-level reasoning across a 1M-token context (Dev Team multi-agent mode); Precise logic — raycasters, physics — where one-shot open models slip. The trade-off is the weaknesses we logged on the bench: One-shot creative-visual builds trail GLM 5.2 here (lost 4 of 5) — no iteration to catch its own bugs; A temporal-dead-zone bug blanked its N-body orbit sim on the first shot.
How does Goldie Bench score Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Sonnet 5?
Every demo on this page was built by Julian Goldie inside the Agent Operating System — same fixed prompt for both models, one shot, single HTML file out. Each result gets a 0–10 score on whether it ran, how close it hit the brief, and how good it looked. The highest score on each task gets gold; second gets silver; third gets bronze. See methodology for full provenance.
Related comparisons
Other head-to-heads using the same scoring system:
Claude Opus 5 vs Fusion Claude Sonnet 5 vs Fusion Claude Opus 5 vs Hermes MoA Claude Sonnet 5 vs Hermes MoA Claude Opus 5 vs GPT-5.6 Sol Claude Sonnet 5 vs GPT-5.6 Sol Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Fable 5 Claude Sonnet 5 vs Claude Fable 5Full model pages: Claude Opus 5 · Claude Sonnet 5 · back to the leaderboard
The same stack Julian uses
Run this stack yourself.
Every demo on this bench was built inside the Agent Operating System — one prompt, one shot, single HTML file out. The Agent OS, the prompts, the templates, the weekly walkthroughs and 4,000+ founders shipping with it every day all live inside the AI Profit Boardroom.
4,000+founders
258documented wins
38countries
$59/momonthly