---
title: "Compare alternatives to Claude Opus 5 · Undominated.ai"
canonical: https://undominated.ai/alternatives/anthropic__claude-opus-5/
description: "2 alternatives score at least as high as Claude Opus 5 and cost no more under at least one listed workload. 2 preserve recorded capabilities; 0 have named trade-offs."
---

# Compare alternatives to Claude Opus 5 · Undominated.ai

> 2 alternatives score at least as high as Claude Opus 5 and cost no more under at least one listed workload. 2 preserve recorded capabilities; 0 have named trade-offs.

# Alternatives to Claude Opus 5

Anthropic · LMArena 1502.1 · $10.00/M on a balanced workload · prices as of 2026-10-06

 [Compare models](https://undominated.ai/compare/) Comparison context

Choose up to three standard models in Compare.

Requirements and prompt length apply in Compare. This page keeps its stated price basis and workload controls.

## 2 models are higher-scoring or cheaper, with neither dimension worse.

Of the 144 models carrying both an independent score and a published price at the same delivery mode, **2** score at least as high as Claude Opus 5 and cost no more under at least one listed workload, with at least one of those dimensions improved. **1** of them cost less; the rest match the price and have a higher score. **2** match or beat its recorded context, maximum output, input modes, tool use and extended reasoning.

Dominance is not a property of a model. It is a property of a model, a capability lens and a workload, and all three are named on every row. Scores are LMArena Elo, used under CC BY 4.0 from the official dataset; prices are blended per million tokens. A higher score is not a drop-in replacement.

This page is built only while a candidate improves score or price without worsening the other under a listed workload. When that comparison no longer holds, it is not generated.

## Where it holds

| Workload | Claude Opus 5 $/M | Recorded capabilities preserved | Recorded capability losses |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Balanced | $10.00 | 2 | 0 |
| Summarise | $4.72 | 2 | 0 |
| Chat | $11.65 | 2 | 0 |
| Code gen | $16.64 | 2 | 0 |
| Agentic | $5.32 | 2 | 0 |

Workload mixes are defined on the [methodology page](/methodology/). Cached input is priced at the cached rate, and reasoning tokens at the worse of the reasoning and output rates.

## What you would be replacing

| Intelligence | 1502.1 |
| --- | --- |
| Context window | 1M |
| Max output | 128K |
| Input modes | text, image, file |
| Tool use | yes |
| Extended reasoning | yes |

Preserving recorded capabilities requires matching or beating these fields. [Full record for Claude Opus 5](/models/anthropic__claude-opus-5/), or [check Claude Opus 5 against the whole catalogue](/check/anthropic__claude-opus-5/).

## Recorded capabilities preserved 2

Each option has a higher score or a lower price, with neither dimension worse under the listed workloads. It matches or beats Claude Opus 5 on recorded context, maximum output, input modes, tool use and extended reasoning.

| # | Model | Intelligence | $/M | Holds under |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | [Claude Opus 5.5](/models/anthropic__claude-opus-5.5/) Anthropic | 1511.7 tie | $8.00 | Balanced −20% Summarise −21% Chat −21% Code gen −20% Agentic −22% |
| 2 | [Claude Opus 4.6](/models/anthropic__claude-opus-4.6/) Anthropic | 1503.2 tie | $10.00 | Balanced same price Summarise same price Chat same price Code gen same price Agentic same price |

## What this compares, and what it leaves out

 - Quality is LMArena Elo, used under CC BY 4.0 from the official dataset. The 95% confidence interval on a difference between two scores is about ±10.47 points, so a gap smaller than that is marked *tie* rather than an improvement — see [significance bands](/significance/).
 - 204 further models at this delivery mode carry a price but no independent score. They are absent from the comparison in both directions — unrated is not a zero, and an unmeasured model is neither an alternative nor a worse buy.
 - Retired models are never offered as an alternative, and a model only competes against its own delivery mode: batch trades latency for price, so it is not a like-for-like swap.
 - Nothing here measures latency, throughput, rate limits or how a model behaves on your prompts. Two models with the same index score are not interchangeable.
 - Models with no higher-scoring or cheaper alternative that is no worse on the other axis are on the [value frontier](/frontier/). Models with such an alternative are [listed here](/alternatives/).

## Continue your investigation

 - [Check requirements](/check/)
- [Compare exact differences](/compare/)
- [Set a quality floor](/cheapest-at/)
- [Inspect tier boundaries](/cliffs/)