Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Claude Sonnet 5?
As of August 20, 2026, Claude Sonnet 5 is 33% cheaper on blended LLM API pricing. Claude Sonnet 5 costs $2.00 per million input tokens and $10.00 per million output tokens ($12.00 blended 1M-in + 1M-out). Claude Sonnet 4.6 costs $3.00 / $15.00 per million tokens ($18.00 blended). Sources: https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing and https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing. The cheapest LLM for your app still depends on how many output tokens you generate.
How much does Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Claude Sonnet 5 cost per million tokens?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 Claude API pricing from Anthropic is $3.00 input and $15.00 output per million tokens via Anthropic. Claude Sonnet 5 Claude API pricing from Anthropic is $2.00 input and $10.00 output per million tokens via Anthropic. Use those four numbers, not ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro subscription prices, when you are comparing APIs.
Which is better for coding, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Claude Sonnet 5?
Claude Sonnet 5 leads on SWE-bench Verified: Claude Sonnet 4.6 at 79.6% vs Claude Sonnet 5 at 85.2%. SWE-bench measures real GitHub fixes; LiveCodeBench measures contest programming.
What is the context window for Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Claude Sonnet 5?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 supports a 1M token context window, while Claude Sonnet 5 supports 1M tokens. Both models have the same context window size. Filling a larger window bills more input tokens, so the cheaper-per-million model can still cost more on long documents.
Which model performs better on benchmarks, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Claude Sonnet 5?
Claude Sonnet 5 leads on 30 of 35 shared benchmarks versus Claude Sonnet 4.6's 5 wins. Check the comparison table for GPQA Diamond, SWE-bench, MMLU, HLE, and the other evals we track. Token price and benchmark score together are the usual LLM comparison, not either number alone.
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Claude Sonnet 5 better for production use?
Both Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Claude Sonnet 5 are production API models. For cost-sensitive production traffic, Claude Sonnet 5 has better economics on the blended 1M-in + 1M-out scale. For maximum capability, weight the benchmark table for your domain. Many production stacks route cheap models for drafts and a frontier model for the hard turn, which is usually cheaper than sending everything to the expensive API.
Can I switch between Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Claude Sonnet 5 in my app?
Yes. Call Claude Sonnet 4.6 through Anthropic and Claude Sonnet 5 through Anthropic with separate API keys, or through a gateway that already wraps both. Keep prompts in tokens, not characters, when you estimate the invoice. AnotherWrapper templates can swap providers without rewriting auth and billing.
How accurate is this Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Claude Sonnet 5 pricing data?
List rates are the latest published Claude API pricing from Anthropic and Claude API pricing from Anthropic, quoted per million tokens. Official rate sheets: https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing and https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing. Prompt caching, batch APIs, and committed-use discounts can change the invoice. Benchmark scores are from official publications and independent evals, updated as new numbers land.
What is the output token limit for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Claude Sonnet 5?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 supports up to 64K output tokens per request, while Claude Sonnet 5 supports up to 64K output tokens. Output tokens are usually the expensive half of API pricing, so a higher max output cap is a capability, not a discount.
Which model has better throughput, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Claude Sonnet 5?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 runs at approximately 42 tokens/second while Claude Sonnet 5 runs at 42 tokens/second. Claude Sonnet 5 is faster in raw throughput. Throughput (tokens per second) and time-to-first-token are why two models with the same per-million-token price can still feel different in chat and agents.
How do I switch the models in this Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Claude Sonnet 5 comparison?
Use the model pickers at the top of this LLM comparison. Search any model in the index and the URL updates. Open Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Claude Sonnet 5 from the sidebar for the single-model API pricing page, or go back to the LLM pricing table to sort by cheapest blended cost.
