Except in a lot of schools, “honors” classes are actually easier because the teachers do a lot more tutoring rather than a more comprehensive or deeper study of the subject.
In my high school, calculus, physics, and advanced chemistry were not honors, but there were honors classes for English and biology.
As a result, you had to choose between actually learning something or going for the highest possible GPA. Usually the second tier of students actually got the highest GPAs, and the budding rocket scientists took second place.
How long ago was that? My experience 20 years ago was the opposite. The honors kids were required to TUTOR the regular class kids and there were honors and AP math, science, history, etc classes of all types. We had a 9th grader taking AP Calculus BC (College Calc 2nd semester) and ace it, giving him a 6.0 GPA for the class. He also perfect score on the AP exam and a 1600 SAT score that year as well. Not bad for a Chinese immigrant.