Claude’s Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus names describe intended tiers—not guarantees that one model will win every task. Anthropic positions Haiku for speed and high-volume work, Sonnet as a balance for everyday tasks, and Opus for complex work requiring greater judgment. As of October 7, 2026, Anthropic lists Sonnet 5.5 as available; it describes Haiku 5.5 as expected in the coming weeks, not as released.
Claude Opus vs Sonnet vs Haiku: what the tiers mean
Anthropic introduced the three-tier family with Claude 3 in March 2024, framing the choice around capability, speed, and cost. Those are vendor positioning statements, not independent guarantees: an Opus response is not automatically better than every Sonnet response, and the right fit depends on the task and workflow.
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| Tier | Anthropic’s positioning | Practical fit to evaluate | Questions to ask |
|---|---|---|---|
| Haiku | Fast, economical, and suitable for high-volume or low-latency use. Anthropic described Haiku 4.5 for real-time tasks such as chat assistants and customer service. | Repeated tasks where responsiveness and cost matter, provided quality meets your threshold. | Does it meet the quality bar? What latency and throughput do you need? Is this exact version available on your endpoint? |
| Sonnet | Capable everyday work. Anthropic highlights Sonnet 5.5 for coding, agents, knowledge work, and creating documents, slides, and spreadsheets. | General-purpose work and routine development; compare with Opus on difficult tasks. | How many tokens and retries does a representative task use? Does the workflow need tools, computer use, or long-running execution? |
| Opus | Anthropic positions Opus 5.5 for complex tasks requiring careful judgment, serious coding, and demanding knowledge work. | Harder work where a quality improvement would justify additional cost or time. | Does better performance materially change the result? Can the workflow accommodate its speed and token budget? |
Anthropic’s current descriptions characterize Sonnet 5.5 as a faster, lower-cost complement to Opus 5.5, rather than a replacement for it. The company describes Sonnet as suited to well-scoped everyday work, bug fixing, agents, knowledge work, and polished office files, while reserving Opus for the most demanding work. See Anthropic’s Sonnet 5.5 announcement and its Opus family page.
Which Claude model should I use?
Choose by workload, then test candidates on representative tasks from your own workflow. Start with the least costly option that reliably meets the quality bar; move up a tier when errors, retries, or weak results make the cheaper option a false economy.
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- Define the task and its error cost. A short, repeated classification task and a difficult system-design review do not have the same tolerance for mistakes.
- Test realistic examples. Compare quality on the same prompts, tools, context, and output requirements. Include edge cases and review the results rather than relying on one impressive example.
- Measure the whole workflow. Record latency, throughput, input and output tokens, retries, and any effort or thinking settings. Compare cost per successfully completed task, not just the model’s per-token rate.
- Confirm the deployment details. Check the exact model identifier, version, region, product plan, platform, and endpoint you intend to use.
- Check workflow and safety constraints. Verify that the model’s tool access, data handling, and reliability meet your requirements before deploying it.
For two or more candidates, compare task complexity and error cost, quality on your examples, latency and throughput, total token cost per completed task, effort settings, exact model identifier, access route, and any safety or workflow constraints. These checks matter because “Sonnet” or “Opus” alone does not identify every operational detail.
What’s new in Claude Sonnet 5.5?
Anthropic announced Sonnet 5.5 on September 28, 2026, and lists it as available. Its stated model identifier is claude-sonnet-5-5. The announcement emphasizes coding, agents, knowledge work, and creation of polished documents, slides, and spreadsheets.
Anthropic reports a 70.6% result on Terminal-Bench 4.0, an agentic coding evaluation, in the Sonnet 5.5 launch announcement. This is a vendor-reported result for that named benchmark, not a general ranking across all tasks. Anthropic also says typical workloads may cost up to 30% less per task than Sonnet 5; that workload-dependent claim is not a guaranteed reduction for every user or request.
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Claude API prices and availability
Anthropic’s published rates below are API token prices, not Claude consumer subscription fees. A request’s bill depends on its token use and any applicable caching or platform terms; per-token rates alone do not establish the cost of completing a task.
| Model | Input, per 1 million tokens | Output, per 1 million tokens | Cache reads, per 1 million tokens | Cache writes, per 1 million tokens | Identifier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sonnet 5.5 | $2 | $10 | $0.20 | $2.50 | claude-sonnet-5-5 |
| Opus 5.5 | $4 | $20 | $0.20 | Not stated on Anthropic’s Opus family page reviewed October 7, 2026. | claude-opus-5-5 |
Anthropic’s Sonnet 5.5 launch page published the Sonnet rates on September 28, 2026; its family page lists Claude.ai on web, iOS, and Android, as well as Claude Platform, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Foundry for developers. The Opus family page, accessed October 7, 2026, lists the Opus rates and native Claude Platform, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Foundry availability. Opus also has a fast mode with separate rates; consult the live Opus page before using those figures.
Access can vary by region, plan, and platform, and published prices or availability may change. Confirm the current details with Anthropic or the cloud provider you plan to use. The stated rates are not a cross-platform price guarantee.
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This is a chronology of major releases and model-card entries in Anthropic’s reviewed pages, not a promise that each model remains selectable on every product or cloud platform. Dates are shown at the precision stated by Anthropic.
| Date | Release |
|---|---|
| July 2023 | Claude 2 |
| March 4, 2024 | Claude 3: Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus introduced. |
| June 2024 | Claude Sonnet 3.5. |
| October 2024 | Claude 3.5 Haiku and an upgraded Sonnet 3.5. |
| February 2025 | Claude Sonnet 3.7. |
| May 22, 2025 | Claude Sonnet 4. |
| May 2025 | Claude Opus 4. |
| August 2025 | Claude Opus 4.1. |
| September 29, 2025 | Claude Sonnet 4.5. |
| October 15, 2025 | Claude Haiku 4.5. |
| November 2025 | Claude Opus 4.5. |
| February 5, 2026 | Claude Opus 4.6. |
| February 17, 2026 | Claude Sonnet 4.6. |
| April 2026 | Claude Opus 4.7. |
| May 28, 2026 | Claude Opus 4.8. |
| June 30, 2026 | Claude Sonnet 5. |
| July 2026 | Claude Opus 5. |
| September 22, 2026 | Claude Opus 5.5. |
| September 28, 2026 | Claude Sonnet 5.5. |
| Coming weeks, as stated September 28, 2026 | Claude Haiku 5.5 was expected; availability is not established by that announcement. |
For release history, Anthropic’s Sonnet page gives individual Sonnet dates, while its model system-card index lists major model cards. The separate Sonnet 5 announcement is dated June 30, 2026.
How to interpret Claude comparisons and benchmarks
Benchmarks describe performance under a particular evaluation, not every use case. Anthropic’s Terminal-Bench 4.0 figure is relevant evidence about an agentic coding test, but it does not establish that Sonnet 5.5 is best for all coding, knowledge work, or reasoning. When evaluating a published comparison, identify the benchmark, model version, effort setting if reported, publisher, and date. Then test the work you actually need done.
Likewise, distinguish a version-specific fact from a family-level description. A price, benchmark, availability note, or system card for an older 4.x model should not be assumed to describe a 5.5 model. The family name identifies the tier; the version and model identifier identify the specific release.
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Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
