# Anthropic Claude Opus 3 — deprecation status

> Yes — Claude Opus 3 is retired. Anthropic deprecated it on June 30, 2025 and shut it down on January 5, 2026; API requests to it now fail. The recommended replacement is Claude Opus 4.8.

The first Claude to beat GPT-4 on published benchmarks, and the model that put Anthropic in serious contention. It had an unusually long deprecation window — six months — and its retirement prompted Anthropic's public commitments on preserving model weights after shutdown.

## Facts

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Provider | Anthropic |
| Model id | `claude-3-opus-20240229` |
| Status | Retired |
| Released | February 29, 2024 |
| Deprecated | June 30, 2025 |
| Shutdown | January 5, 2026 (206 days ago) |
| Last verified | July 30, 2026 |

## Replacement

- **Claude Opus 4.8** (`claude-opus-4-8`) · recommended — https://modeldeprecations.dev/anthropic/claude-opus-4-8
  - Opus 4.8 is cheaper per token than Opus 3 was, has a 1M-token context window against 200k, and rejects temperature, top_p and top_k.
  - Parameters it accepts: https://modelparams.dev/models/anthropic/claude-opus-4-8

```diff
- "model": "claude-3-opus-20240229"
+ "model": "claude-opus-4-8"
```

## FAQ

### When did Anthropic Claude Opus 3 shut down?

Anthropic Claude Opus 3 shut down on January 5, 2026. API requests to it fail from that date onward.

### What replaces Anthropic Claude Opus 3?

Anthropic recommends Claude Opus 4.8 (`claude-opus-4-8`) as the replacement for Anthropic Claude Opus 3. Opus 4.8 is cheaper per token than Opus 3 was, has a 1M-token context window against 200k, and rejects temperature, top_p and top_k.

### Is Anthropic Claude Opus 3 still available?

No. Anthropic Claude Opus 3 is retired and no longer served — it was shut down on January 5, 2026. Calls to it return an error.

### How do I migrate from Anthropic Claude Opus 3 to claude-opus-4-8?

Swap the model id in your API call: replace "claude-3-opus-20240229" with "claude-opus-4-8". Opus 4.8 is cheaper per token than Opus 3 was, has a 1M-token context window against 200k, and rejects temperature, top_p and top_k.

## Sources

- [Anthropic model deprecations](https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/model-deprecations) — accessed 2026-07-30

---

Canonical page: https://modeldeprecations.dev/anthropic/claude-3-opus-20240229
JSON: https://modeldeprecations.dev/api/v1/models/anthropic/claude-3-opus-20240229.json