Compare · updated 2026-11-01
Claude Opus vs Claude Haiku
Claude Opus is better at writing, coding, reasoning, maths, structured data, long documents, translation; Claude Haiku is better at quick answers. Claude Haiku is the cheaper of the two on output.
Measured quality by task
| Task | Claude Opus | Claude Haiku | Better |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quick answers | 82/100 | 85/100 | Claude Haiku |
| Writing | 94/100 | 89/100 | Claude Opus |
| Coding | 98/100 | 82/100 | Claude Opus |
| Reasoning | 99/100 | 74/100 | Claude Opus |
| Maths | 96/100 | 79/100 | Claude Opus |
| Structured data | 87/100 | 86/100 | Claude Opus |
| Long documents | 87/100 | 87/100 | Claude Opus |
| Translation | 92/100 | 83/100 | Claude Opus |
Quality is Nivana’s measured score for each kind of task, from weekly pairwise evals judged by models from several labs. Prices are live AI Gateway list prices per million tokens. Updated 2026-11-01. How this is measured.
Price and context
| Claude Opus | Claude Haiku | |
|---|---|---|
| Lab | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Input per 1M tokens | $4 | $0.1 |
| Output per 1M tokens | $20 | $0.5 |
| Typical chat answer | $0.020 | $0.00050 |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Router picks it for | 3 of 24 request types | Fallback only |
Which should you use?
Use the one that wins the kind of work you do most, unless the price gap outweighs the quality gap for easy requests. Or don’t choose: Nivana scores both, and the rest of the pool, on every request and sends it to whichever is best for that request.
Questions
Is Claude Opus better than Claude Haiku?
On Nivana’s weekly evals Claude Opus scores higher on 7 of 8 task types (writing, coding, reasoning, maths, structured data, long documents, translation) and Claude Haiku on 1 (quick answers). Neither is better at everything.
Which is better for coding, Claude Opus or Claude Haiku?
Claude Opus: 98/100 against 82/100 for Claude Haiku on Nivana’s coding evals.
Which is better for writing, Claude Opus or Claude Haiku?
Claude Opus: 94/100 against 89/100 for Claude Haiku on Nivana’s writing evals.
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus or Claude Haiku?
Claude Haiku: $0.5 per million output tokens against $20 for Claude Opus, about 40.0× less. A typical chat answer costs about $0.0005 on Claude Haiku and $0.020 on Claude Opus.
Or let the router pick, per request
Nivana sends every message to the model that scores best for it, sets how hard it thinks, and tells you which one answered. 2,000 free credits to start, no card.