PREVIOUS SONNETPRICE HELDAGENTICTEXT + VISIONPROMPT CACHING
Claude Sonnet 5 API Pricing
Claude Sonnet 5 launched June 30, 2026 and was replaced as Anthropic's current Sonnet by Claude Sonnet 5.5 on September 28, 2026, at the same prices - until October 7, when Anthropic halved Sonnet 5.5's cache read to $0.10/M while Sonnet 5 kept $0.20/M. Sonnet 5 stays on the price list at $2/M input and $10/M output. That rate launched as introductory pricing due to expire August 31, 2026 — on August 10, 2026 Anthropic made it the standard price and cancelled the scheduled rise to $3/$15.
Input - per 1M tokens
$2.00/M
Standard since Aug 13 held
Output - per 1M tokens
$10.00/M
$15/M rise cancelled held
Cached input - per 1M tokens
$0.20/M
Cache write $2.50 / $4 -90%
Effective - agentic blend
$1.36/M
92/8 split - 82% cache
§ 01 / TERMINAL
Run the numbers.
Calculator pre-loaded with the standard Claude Sonnet 5 API rate. No price change is scheduled: the $3/M input and $15/M output tier once planned for September 1, 2026 was cancelled.
$ /mo
Workload split
Prompt cache hit rate
Tokens you can process
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Words equivalent (English)
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Effective rate
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§ 02 / SCENARIOS
Real-world presets.
SUPPORT AGENT
Ticket triage with tools
$0.022/ticket
CODING AGENT
Repo-wide bug fix
$0.194/task
LONG DOC ANALYSIS
Contract risk review
$0.227/doc
RESEARCH OPS
Analyst brief draft
$0.077/brief
Estimate · anthropic-bpe-estimate · ≈2.6 chars/token Auto-counts as you type
This is a chars-per-token approximation, not a real tokenizer. Actual tokens vary by language, code density, and tool-call overhead — counts are typically ±10–20% off for English prose, more for code or non-Latin scripts. For exact billing, use the vendor's official tokenizer.
Characters 786
Words 132
Tokens (estimated) 302 tokens
Cost as input · uncached $0.0006 USD
Cost as output · uncached $0.00302 USD
Cost as cached input $0.00006 USD
| Model | Input /M | Output /M | Effective blended | Context | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Sonnet 5 Current | $2.00 cache $0.20 | $10.00 | $1.36 agentic 92/8 | 1M | The Sonnet before 5.5 |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | $2.00 cache $0.10 | $10.00 | $1.29 −6% | 1M | Newest Sonnet, half the cache read |
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | $3.00 cache $0.30 | $15.00 | $2.05 +50% | 1M | Existing Sonnet migrations |
| Claude Opus 5 | $5.00 cache $0.50 | $25.00 | $3.41 +2.5× | 1M | Anthropic's general frontier tier |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | $1.00 cache $0.10 | $5.00 | $0.682 −2.0× | 200K | Support and classification |
| Claude Fable 5 | $10.00 cache $1.00 | $50.00 | $6.82 +5.0× | 1M | Anthropic's top capability tier |
| GPT-5.6 Sol | $4.00 cache $0.40 | $20.00 | $2.73 +2.0× · promo | 1.05M | OpenAI frontier agents |
| Gemini 3.6 Flash | $0.75 cache $0.075 | $3.75 | $0.481 −2.8× · promo | 1M | Google's mainstream tier |
| Fugu Ultra | $5.00 cache $0.50 | $30.00 | $3.61 +2.6× | 1M | Orchestrated multi-agent tasks |
Frequently asked.
Practical Claude Sonnet 5 pricing questions, including the standard API rate, the cancelled September 1 increase, and how cache writes are billed.
Q · 01 What is Claude Sonnet 5 priced at? +
Anthropic lists Claude Sonnet 5 at
$2/M input and $10/M output. That began as introductory pricing due to end August 31, 2026, but on August 10, 2026 Anthropic made it the standard price: the page now says the scheduled increase to $3/$15 on September 1, 2026 will not occur.Q · 02 How is cached input billed? +
Anthropic's pricing table itemises Claude Sonnet 5: cache hits at
$0.20/M, 5-minute cache writes at $2.50/M and 1-hour writes at $4/M. Writes replace the base input price rather than adding to it, so a 5-minute cache pays for itself after a single hit. These figures are stable: the September 1, 2026 increase that would have raised them to $0.30/M, $3.75/M and $6/M was cancelled.Q · 03 What model ID should developers use? +
Anthropic says to use
claude-sonnet-5 via the Claude API. It is available natively on Claude Platform and through AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Foundry.Q · 04 Is Sonnet 5 still going up in price on September 1? +
No. Anthropic cancelled it. The launch schedule had Sonnet 5 moving to
$3/M input and $15/M output on September 1, 2026 - a 50% rise that would have taken the blended agentic rate from $1.36/M to about $2.05/M. On August 10, 2026 Anthropic announced that the increase will not occur and that $2/$10 is now standard. Budgets built around a September step-up can be unwound.Q · 05 Is there a Batch API discount? +
Yes. Anthropic's Sonnet 5 page points to 50% savings with batch processing, which on the standard rate implies
$1/M input and $5/M output for eligible batch workloads.Q · 06 Does US-only inference change the price? +
Yes. Anthropic says workloads that need to run in the US can use US-only inference at
1.1x pricing for input and output tokens. The headline prices on this page use standard global routing.Q · 07 What is Sonnet 5 best for? +
Anthropic positions Sonnet 5 for advanced coding, long-running agents, browser and computer use, enterprise workflows, customer-facing agents, and high-volume production tasks where Sonnet speed and cost matter.
Q · 08 Should I move from Sonnet 5 to Sonnet 5.5? +
On price, a little: Sonnet 5.5 has the same input, output, cache-write and batch rates and the same tokenizer, but since October 7, 2026 it reads cache at
$0.10/M against $0.20/M here - $1.29/M against $1.36/M under our cache-heavy blend. The migration cost is in code and in thinking. On 5.5 thinking is on by default at high effort and cannot be disabled outright, forced tool use returns an error, and thinking blocks are tied to the conversation. Sonnet 5 remains available, with retirement not sooner than June 30, 2027; against Sonnet 4.6's $3/$15 both are cheaper.