Anthropic announced on March 13, 2026, that the full 1 million token context window is now generally available for Claude Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6. The release eliminates the long-context premium, offering the extended window at standard pricing across all major cloud platforms.
No Premium for Extended Context
The pricing structure remains unchanged regardless of context length used. Opus 4.6 costs $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens, while Sonnet 4.6 is priced at $3/$15 per million tokens. This represents a significant shift from typical industry practices where extended context windows command premium pricing.
Opus 4.6 Achieves 78.3% on Multi-hop Retrieval Benchmark
Anthropic reports that Opus 4.6 scored 78.3% on MRCR v2 (Multi-hop Retrieval with Context Reasoning), marking the highest performance among frontier models at the 1 million token context length. This benchmark tests the model's ability to retrieve and reason across information distributed throughout the entire context window without requiring summarization or context clearing.
The expanded window now supports 600 images or PDF pages, up from the previous limit of 100. This increase enables use cases such as loading entire codebases, extensive contract collections, and complete agent execution traces within single conversations.
Availability Across Major Cloud Platforms
The 1 million token context window is available on Claude Platform, Microsoft Azure Foundry, and Google Cloud's Vertex AI. Standard rate limits apply across the entire window. Claude Code users on Max, Team, and Enterprise plans with Opus 4.6 can now leverage the complete window automatically, reducing forced compaction events that previously interrupted long sessions.
Key Takeaways
- Claude Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6 now offer 1 million token context windows at standard pricing with no long-context premium
- Opus 4.6 achieves 78.3% on MRCR v2, the highest score among frontier models at 1M context length
- Media capacity increased from 100 to 600 images or PDF pages within the 1M window
- Available on Claude Platform, Microsoft Azure Foundry, and Google Cloud's Vertex AI
- Claude Code integration enables Max, Team, and Enterprise users to utilize the full window without forced compaction