Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Sonnet 4.6
Pick up to 3 models · pricing, context and capabilities · simulate your product cost
Data updated on September 30, 2026· 217 models
Claude Opus 5 is Anthropic’s flagship model for demanding reasoning, coding, and long-horizon agentic work.
- Reasoning estimated
- ▲
- Speed estimated
- Input
- Output
- Context
- 1 M tokens
- Max output
- 128 K
- Input, $ per 1M tokens
- $5.00
- Output, $ per 1M tokens
- $25.00
- Cache read, $ per 1M
- $0.500
- Batch (input / output)
- $2.50 / $12.50
- Tool calling
- Yes
- Released
- ▲07/24/2026
- Knowledge cutoff
- 2026-05
- API id
- anthropic/claude-opus-5
Sonnet 4.6 is Anthropic's most capable Sonnet-class model yet, with frontier performance across coding, agents, and professional work.
- Reasoning estimated
- Speed estimated
- ▲
- Input
- Output
- Context
- 1 M tokens
- Max output
- 128 K
- Input, $ per 1M tokens
- ▲$3.00
- Output, $ per 1M tokens
- ▲$15.00
- Cache read, $ per 1M
- $0.300
- Batch (input / output)
- $1.50 / $7.50
- Tool calling
- Yes
- Released
- 02/17/2026
- Knowledge cutoff
- 2025-08-31
- API id
- anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6
Which is the better API choice: Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Sonnet 4.6?
- Claude Sonnet 4.6: cheapest input (40% less than Claude Opus 5)
- Claude Sonnet 4.6: cheapest output
- Claude Opus 5: the newest (07/24/2026)
- Claude Opus 5: most reasoning (estimated)
- Claude Sonnet 4.6: the fastest (estimated)
Claude Sonnet 4.6 costs 40% less on input and 40% less on output than Claude Opus 5 ($3.00 / $15.00 versus $5.00 / $25.00 per million tokens). All accept 1 M tokens of context. Claude Opus 5 and Claude Sonnet 4.6 offer a batch tier at half price for jobs that do not need an immediate answer.
What would your product cost?
Estimate the monthly cost with your app's real volume. List prices, no cache or batch discounts.
With Claude Sonnet 4.6 you save $70.00 a month versus Claude Opus 5 (40% less).
The 6 cheapest for this scenario (chat, last 12 months)
- 1Lyria 3 Pro Preview Google$0.00
- 2Lyria 3 Clip Preview Google$0.00
- 3Qwen3.7 Flash Qwen$0.97
- 4DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 DeepSeek$1.55
- 5Ministral 3 3B 2512 Mistral$1.90
- 6Qwen3.5-Flash Qwen$2.02
Paste your prompt: tokens and cost per model
Rough estimate (about 4 characters per token). Nothing is sent to any server.
Cost of sending it 1,000 times (input only)
- 1Claude Sonnet 5.5 Anthropic$0.152
- 2Claude Sonnet 5 Anthropic$0.152
- 3Claude Sonnet 4.6 Anthropic$0.228
- 4Claude Opus 5.5 Anthropic$0.304
- 5Claude Opus 5 Anthropic$0.380
- 6Claude Opus 4.8 Anthropic$0.380
- 7Claude Fable 5.1 Anthropic$0.760
- 8Claude Fable 5 Anthropic$0.760
Popular comparisons
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs GPT-6.1 Sol
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Gemini 3.8 Flash
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Grok 4.7
- GPT-6.1 Sol vs Gemini 3.8 Flash
- GPT-6.1 Sol vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
- GPT-6.1 Sol vs Grok 4.7
- Gemini 3.8 Flash vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
- Gemini 3.8 Flash vs Grok 4.7
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs Grok 4.7
Frequently asked questions
Which is the better API choice: Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Sonnet 4.6?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 costs 40% less on input and 40% less on output than Claude Opus 5 ($3.00 / $15.00 versus $5.00 / $25.00 per million tokens). All accept 1 M tokens of context. Claude Opus 5 and Claude Sonnet 4.6 offer a batch tier at half price for jobs that do not need an immediate answer.
Which is cheaper: Claude Opus 5 and Claude Sonnet 4.6?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is cheaper: $3.00 per million input tokens and $15.00 per million output tokens, versus $5.00 / $25.00 for Claude Opus 5.
Which has more context: Claude Opus 5 and Claude Sonnet 4.6?
Claude Opus 5 and Claude Sonnet 4.6 accept the same context: 1 M tokens.
Which is newer: Claude Opus 5 and Claude Sonnet 4.6?
Claude Opus 5 was released on 07/24/2026; Claude Sonnet 4.6 on 02/17/2026.
What would 10,000 requests a month cost with Claude Opus 5 and Claude Sonnet 4.6?
With 1,500 input and 400 output tokens per request: Claude Opus 5: $175.00; Claude Sonnet 4.6: $105.00 a month, at list price.
Where do the prices come from and how often are they updated?
From the public catalogs of OpenRouter, models.dev and LiteLLM, which publish each provider's list prices. They sync once a day and the last update date is shown above the comparison.
What does price per million tokens mean?
It is what the provider charges per million tokens you send (input) or the model generates (output). A token is roughly 4 characters. Output almost always costs more than input.
Sources: OpenRouter, models.dev and LiteLLM. Prices in USD per million tokens, list price, no volume discounts. Prompt tokens are an estimate; each provider's tokenizer may differ.