Claude (Anthropic) Claude Opus 3 End of Life Date
Claude (Anthropic) Claude Opus 3 end-of-life date, support status, and CVE risk. Data from endoflife.date and official vendor documentation.
Claude (Anthropic) claude-3-opus-20240229 was released on March 4, 2024 and support ended on January 5, 2026 — a supported lifespan of 1 year and 10 months, longer than the 1 year and 1 month median for Claude (Anthropic) releases. It has been without security patches for 7 months. 8 newer Claude (Anthropic) releases have shipped since.
| Version | Latest | EOL Date | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude 1.0 | — | Nov 6, 2024 | EOL |
| Claude Instant 1.0 | — | Nov 6, 2024 | EOL |
| Claude 1.1 | — | Nov 6, 2024 | EOL |
| Claude 1.2 | — | Nov 6, 2024 | EOL |
| Claude Instant 1.1 | — | Nov 6, 2024 | EOL |
| Claude 1.3 | — | Nov 6, 2024 | EOL |
| Claude 2.0 | — | Jul 21, 2025 | EOL |
| Claude Instant 1.2 | — | Nov 6, 2024 | EOL |
What does Claude (Anthropic) Claude Opus 3 end of life mean?
When Claude (Anthropic) Claude Opus 3 reaches end of life, the maintainers stop issuing security patches for this version. CVEs discovered after the EOL date are publicly disclosed on the National Vulnerability Database with no patch available. Exploit code frequently appears on GitHub within days of disclosure.
The CVE blind spot: Most vulnerability scanners check for known CVEs but do not flag the ongoing accumulation of unpatched vulnerabilities in EOL software versions. Running Claude (Anthropic) Claude Opus 3 past its EOL date creates a permanently growing attack surface that standard security tooling will not surface.
Migrate to Claude (Anthropic) Claude Opus 5 or implement compensating controls — network segmentation, enhanced monitoring, restricted access — while migration is underway.