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Model comparison

Claude Opus 5 vs Microsoft MAI-Thinking-1

Anthropic against Microsoft, compared on context, price, and verified benchmark results.

Catalog record checked September 5, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: High — see receipts below

Anthropic

Claude Opus 5

Frontier

vs

Microsoft

Microsoft MAI-Thinking-1

Frontier

AI model capability comparison
SpecificationClaude Opus 5Microsoft MAI-Thinking-1
ProviderAnthropicMicrosoft
TierFrontierFrontier
Context windowWinner: 1M256K
Max outputWinner: 128K64K
Input / 1M tokens$5Winner: $2
Output / 1M tokens$25Winner: $8
WeightsClosedClosed
ParametersNot disclosedUnverified~1T total / 35B active (sparse MoE)
Reasoning levelsadaptivelow, medium, high
Modalitiestext, imagetext
API model idclaude-opus-5mai-thinking-1
ReleasedJuly 24, 2026June 2, 2026
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index [max] (2026-08-14)63Not verifiedUnverified
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (2026-08-14)Not verifiedUnverified55
Humanity's Last Exam (2026-09-01)63.6Not verifiedUnverified
Terminal-Bench 2.1 (2026-09-03)86.7Not verifiedUnverified
AIME 2025 (2026-08-12)Not verifiedUnverified97
SWE-bench Verified (2026-06)Not verifiedUnverified73.5
GPQA Diamond (2026-06)Not verifiedUnverified84.2
Terminal-Bench 2.0 (2026-06)Not verifiedUnverified46

Prices are USD per million tokens at standard rates, excluding batch and caching discounts. Bold indicates the better figure where one is objectively better. Values we could not confirm from the provider are shown as “Not verified” rather than estimated.

Benchmark receipts

  • 2026-09-03: Meta Muse Spark 1.3 launch table (independent cross-vendor run; conflicts with Google's 89.1 — both preserved)Agentic terminal work: multi-step tasks executed in a sandboxed shell environment. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Scores across Terminal-Bench major versions (v1 vs v2) are NOT comparable; harness configuration (container, time limits) also shifts results.
  • 2026-09-02: Google Gemini 3.8 Flash launch eval table (independent cross-vendor run)Agentic terminal work: multi-step tasks executed in a sandboxed shell environment. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Scores across Terminal-Bench major versions (v1 vs v2) are NOT comparable; harness configuration (container, time limits) also shifts results.
  • 2026-09-01: Anthropic Fable 5.1 comparison table (vendor, with tools; 56.6 no tools)Frontier-knowledge ceiling: extremely hard multi-domain questions written to be near-impossible without deep expertise. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Subset/tool configurations (text-only vs with-tools) differ between vendors and materially change scores; must match configuration to compare.
  • 2026-08-14: Artificial AnalysisComposite index blending reasoning, knowledge, and coding evals into one 0–100 score. Comparability: directly comparable — AA occasionally rebaselines the index scale between snapshots — a score captured on one date is only comparable to same-snapshot scores (check measuredAt).
  • 2026-08-12: Microsoft AI — Introducing MAI-Thinking-1 (vendor, 256k output)Competition mathematics: AIME 2025 exam problems, typically pass@1 with tools disallowed or single-attempt code execution per the harness. Comparability: comparable with caveat — 30-question total denominator: one problem = ~3.3 points. Tool-use policy (calculator/code interpreter) must match between compared models.
  • 2026-06: Microsoft AI model page (vendor, as labeled: Terminal-Bench 2.0 — NOT comparable to 2.1 observations)Real GitHub issue resolution: does the model's patch pass the hidden tests. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Post-audit vendor claims and pre-audit scores sit on different task trust levels; scaffolding (agent harness, compute budget) also dominates results. Never aggregate across scaffolds.

Pricing tiers: Claude Opus 5: Standard $5/$25 per MTok; cache reads 10% of base input. Knowledge cutoff May 2026. · Microsoft MAI-Thinking-1: Global Standard $2.00/$8.00 per MTok, cached input $0.20 (Azure Retail Prices API, effective 2026-08-01, uniform across ~22 public regions; US Gov regions carry premiums). Still preview; Global Standard only, no PTU yet. 256K context with a 64K output cap that includes reasoning tokens. ~1T/35B sparse MoE; reasoning is always on (no effort levels). Microsoft's first true reasoning model, trained without OpenAI distillation.

FrontierRecord checked September 3, 2026

Claude Opus 5

Claude Opus 5 is Anthropic's top model for complex agentic coding and enterprise work — superseded at the top of the Artificial Analysis Index by Fable 5.1 (2026-09-01) but stronger on price.

Best for

  • Complex agentic coding
  • Enterprise work
  • Long-context analysis

Watch out

Output costs 5x input; long generations dominate the bill.

FrontierRecord checked September 5, 2026

Microsoft MAI-Thinking-1

MAI-Thinking-1 is Microsoft's first in-house reasoning model, reducing dependence on OpenAI.

Best for

  • Enterprise (Azure)
  • Reasoning
  • Microsoft ecosystem

Watch out

Foundry-gated preview; no MAI-2 exists yet. Of the Build 2026 MAI wave, only MAI-Thinking-1 and MAI-Cyber-1-Flash ($0.60/$3.50, released 2026-07-27) have published token meters.

When the cheaper one wins

Microsoft MAI-Thinking-1 is cheaper on output at $8 per million tokens against $25 for Claude Opus 5 — about 3.1×. Use the cheaper tier for classification, extraction, summarisation, and any task where the expensive model’s extra score does not change the accepted output. The expensive one only pays if your hardest task actually fails on the cheap tier. These are standard-tier API rates, excluding batch and cache discounts.

Run the model picker

Evidence confidence: High

How strong and complete the evidence behind this comparison is — not a prediction of which model is better.

  • Pricing verified on both sides — Input and output rates are verified for both models.
  • 4/5 core specs verified on both sides — Not published for at least one side: parameter count.
  • 1 shared named benchmark with differing scores — Measured on: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index.
  • Verified within the last 90 days — Newest catalog check was 6 days ago.
  • Both models carry source citations — Each side has at least two catalog sources on record.

Source receipts

Each catalog figure was checked against the provider or an independent second source on the date shown.

Related comparisons

Diving deeper on one model? Claude Opus 5 · Microsoft MAI-Thinking-1

Common questions

Claude Opus 5 vs Microsoft MAI-Thinking-1

Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.

Is Claude Opus 5 or Microsoft MAI-Thinking-1 cheaper for input?

Microsoft MAI-Thinking-1 is cheaper at $2 per million input tokens, against $5 for Claude Opus 5 — roughly 2.5× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Claude Opus 5 has tiered pricing: Standard $5/$25 per MTok; cache reads 10% of base input. Knowledge cutoff May 2026. Microsoft MAI-Thinking-1 has tiered pricing: Global Standard $2.00/$8.00 per MTok, cached input $0.20 (Azure Retail Prices API, effective 2026-08-01, uniform across ~22 public regions; US Gov regions carry premiums). Still preview; Global Standard only, no PTU yet. 256K context with a 64K output cap that includes reasoning tokens. ~1T/35B sparse MoE; reasoning is always on (no effort levels). Microsoft's first true reasoning model, trained without OpenAI distillation.

Is Claude Opus 5 or Microsoft MAI-Thinking-1 cheaper for output?

Microsoft MAI-Thinking-1 is cheaper at $8 per million output tokens, against $25 for Claude Opus 5 — roughly 3.1× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Claude Opus 5 has tiered pricing: Standard $5/$25 per MTok; cache reads 10% of base input. Knowledge cutoff May 2026. Microsoft MAI-Thinking-1 has tiered pricing: Global Standard $2.00/$8.00 per MTok, cached input $0.20 (Azure Retail Prices API, effective 2026-08-01, uniform across ~22 public regions; US Gov regions carry premiums). Still preview; Global Standard only, no PTU yet. 256K context with a 64K output cap that includes reasoning tokens. ~1T/35B sparse MoE; reasoning is always on (no effort levels). Microsoft's first true reasoning model, trained without OpenAI distillation.

Which has the larger context window, Claude Opus 5 or Microsoft MAI-Thinking-1?

Claude Opus 5 accepts 1M tokens against 256K for Microsoft MAI-Thinking-1. This only matters if you routinely send very long documents or large codebases.

Do Claude Opus 5 and Microsoft MAI-Thinking-1 support the same reasoning levels?

Claude Opus 5 exposes adaptive, while Microsoft MAI-Thinking-1 exposes low, medium, high.

Should I use Claude Opus 5 or Microsoft MAI-Thinking-1?

Both sit in the frontier tier, so the choice usually comes down to price and context rather than capability. Claude Opus 5 suits complex agentic coding; Microsoft MAI-Thinking-1 suits enterprise (azure).

Next step

Choosing between them

The verified figures that separate this pair, computed from the catalog rather than restated boilerplate.

  • Input price: Microsoft MAI-Thinking-1 costs $2 per 1M tokens versus $5 for Claude Opus 5 — a 2.5x difference at the headline tier.
  • Context: Claude Opus 5 takes 1M against 256K for Microsoft MAI-Thinking-1 — only decisive if your prompts approach the smaller window.
  • Measured capability: Claude Opus 5 leads Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index 63 to 55 (measured 2026-08-14).
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