Is Claude Opus 4.8 a good deal?
Whether anything in this catalogue beats Claude Opus 4.8 on both quality and price, and what you give up if it does. A computation on the current catalogue, not an opinion.
13 undominated of 136 · Sep 23, 2026
As of Sep 23, 2026, Claude Opus 4.8 is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. Claude Opus 5 scores 44.1 higher at the same price, with a covering envelope. 13 of 136 rated, priced standard models are undominated.
Inspect model evidence Compare differences & requirements
Claude Opus 5 scores 44.1 points higher than Claude Opus 4.8 at the same price, $10.00 per million tokens for both.
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1460.8
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$10.00/M
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1504.9
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$10.00/M
Claude Opus 4.8 takes text, image, file, returns up to 128,000 tokens from a 1,000,000-token context, and is listed by 11 sellers.
Compared against 136 rated, priced models on this lens: 5 models dominate it and give up nothing, 5 more dominate it but give something up. Claude Opus 4.8 scores 1460.8 at $10.00 per million tokens for this mix.
Envelope-safe replacements
Each row scores at least as high, costs no more, and covers this model’s context, output, modalities, tools, and reasoning. A cheaper narrower model is not listed here.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 5 | 1504.9 +44.1 | $10.00/M | 0% |
| Claude Opus 4.6 | 1503.0 +42.2 | $10.00/M | 0% |
| Claude Opus 4.7 | 1490.0 +29.2 | $10.00/M | 0% |
| Muse Spark 1.3 | 1489.7 +28.9 | $2.00/M | 80% |
| Muse Spark 1.1 | 1480.2 +19.4 | $2.00/M | 80% |
Higher score, lower price, named losses
Not a drop-in. The loss is why these are not a recommendation.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You give up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 3.8 Flash | 1494.7 | $1.50/M | max output |
| Gemini 3.7 Flash | 1490.5 | $1.50/M | max output |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | 1480.1 | $4.50/M | max output |
| Gemini 3.6 Flash | 1476.1 | $1.50/M | max output |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 1475.7 | $3.38/M | max output |
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Constraint: replacements must preserve the model’s capabilities; any losses remain named trade-offs.
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