Anthropic · released 2025-12
Claude Sonnet 4.6
Sonnet strikes back. The price-performance sweet spot.
context
1M
output max
64K
input /M
$3.00
output /M
$15.00
cached in /M
$0.30
modalities
T·I
Verdict
What it's actually good at
Strengths
- +Excellent value per token
- +Strong code generation
- +Great tool use reliability
- +Handles million-token context
Weaknesses
- −Slightly behind Opus on the hardest reasoning problems
Our scores
reasoning
9.0
coding
9.0
writing
9.0
speed
7.0
value
9.0
Middle-tier Claude with near-Opus quality on most tasks at a fraction of the cost. Default choice for production workloads.
Pricing
Cost at common volumes
| Monthly volume | Input | Output | Est. monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Side project | 1M tok | 0.3M tok | $7.50 |
| Growing app | 50M tok | 15M tok | $375.00 |
| Production | 500M tok | 150M tok | $3750.00 |
| Scale | 5000M tok | 1500M tok | $37500.00 |
Estimates assume uncached input. Prompt caching and batch APIs can cut this by 50–90% for many workloads. Use the calculator →
Head-to-head