The AI Footprint ← All 134 models

How much energy does Claude Opus 4.5 use?

Anthropic · released 2025-11-24

Complex prompt
19.1 Wh
≈ 35 m of driving
Everyday chat
0.820 Wh
Capability
80.7
Energy rank
106 of 134

What this figure is

Day-one estimate  Calculated from an estimated parameter count — the maker hasn't published one. Every model on this site is calculated the same way, so the comparison holds even where the absolute value carries uncertainty. Our figures are good to roughly a factor of two to three, which is why we only ever state a difference of 5× or more.

The figure above is an understatement. Claude Opus 4.5 generates reasoning text you never see, and that text costs energy to produce. Our calculation counts a fixed answer length, so the real figure is higher — we cannot say by how much, because the amount is not published.

Is there a better choice?

A lighter model that does the job
Alibaba · capability 84.8. It is more capable than Claude Opus 4.5 and uses about 54× less energy per answer: 0.351 Wh against 19.1 Wh.

What Anthropic publishes

Energy cannot be worked out without knowing how big a model is. Of the 21 models from Anthropic that we track, 10 can be assessed at all — the rest publish too little for anyone outside the company to calculate anything.

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Figure calculated 2026-09-01 · how these numbers are made · the full comparison of 134 models