After weeks of testing: Sonnet for clean docs, Opus when structure must be inferred
SpryShade · reddit · 2026-09-12
A user who frequently summarizes long documents compared Claude Sonnet and Opus over several weeks on the same materials:
- Clean, well-structured reports: Sonnet was fine and faster; outputs were indistinguishable, saving usage limits.
- Messy sources (interviews, meeting transcripts where key points are implied): Opus pulled ahead—better at noticing "these two paragraphs are about the same thing" and not missing buried decisions.
Their rule of thumb: Sonnet for clean documents, Opus when structure has to be inferred. Not scientific, just what held up across a few dozen documents.
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