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Claude Sonnet 4.6

The first Sonnet to surpass the prior generation's Opus on coding, with improved consistency and instruction following.

List price via Anthropic
Input
$3.00 /1M tokens
Output
$15.00 /1M tokens
Anthropic DigitalOcean Replicate 3 providers

Key Specifications

Context window
1M tokens
Max output
128K tokens
Knowledge cutoff
web search available
Released
Inputs
Text, image
Capabilities Show details
Reasoning Thinks before it answers, always on or as a switchable mode. Function calling Connect to external tools, APIs, and systems. Structured output Return responses in structured formats like JSON. Web search Search the web for up-to-date information. Code execution Write and execute code in a sandboxed environment. File upload Process uploaded documents, spreadsheets, and other files. MCP Connect to services via Model Context Protocol.

Hosted API pricing

Provider Input /1M tokens Output /1M tokens Cached input /1M Cost at 10M in + 2M out
Anthropic logo Anthropic Creator $3.00 $15.00 $0.30 $60.00 View
DigitalOcean logo DigitalOcean $3.00 $15.00 $0.30 $60.00 View
Replicate logo Replicate $3.00 $15.00 $60.00 View

Heads up: Base-tier, on-demand rates per 1M tokens; cached, batch and long-context tiers excluded. A provider may serve a shorter context or a quantized build than the creator's release. Verify before provisioning. More on how we price.

Similarly priced models

The models nearest Claude Sonnet 4.6 by blended rate, each at its own cheapest provider.

Model Blended /1M vs Claude Sonnet 4.6
OpenAI GPT-4o OpenAI $3.75 −25%
OpenAI GPT-5.2 OpenAI $3.7917 −24%
OpenAI GPT-5.3-Codex OpenAI $3.7917 −24%
OpenAI GPT-5.4 OpenAI $4.5833 −8%
Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.5 Anthropic $5.00 0%
Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.6 This model Anthropic $5.00
Anthropic Claude Opus 4.5 Anthropic $8.3333 +67%
Anthropic Claude Opus 4.6 Anthropic $8.3333 +67%
Anthropic Claude Opus 4.7 Anthropic $8.3333 +67%
Anthropic Claude Opus 4.8 Anthropic $8.3333 +67%
Anthropic Claude Opus 5 Anthropic $8.3333 +67%

Prices are USD per 1M tokens at each model's cheapest listed provider. Blended is the cost of 10M input plus 2M output tokens, spread over the 12M.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Claude Sonnet 4.6 good for?

Coding, consistency and instruction following, taking text, images and PDFs. It is priced at Anthropic's Sonnet tier.

When is Claude Sonnet 4.6 not a good fit?

New work where Sonnet 5 is available: it costs less, matches the limits, and knows more recent events. No audio or video input, text-only output, and closed weights, so no self-hosting.

What is the cheapest way to run Claude Sonnet 4.6?

The cheapest hosted rate is $3.00 / $15.00 per 1M tokens via Anthropic.

How does Claude Sonnet 4.6 compare with Claude Sonnet 5?

Anthropic says Claude Sonnet 5 is a substantial step up from Claude Sonnet 4.6 in reasoning, tool use, coding and knowledge work, finishing tasks where earlier Sonnets stopped short and checking its own output unasked. It uses a new tokenizer and hallucinates less. Same 1M-token context and text and image input. Claude Sonnet 4.6 lists at 50% more per 1M input tokens and 50% more per 1M output tokens than Claude Sonnet 5. It came out 4 months earlier and has an older knowledge cutoff (August 2025 against January 2026).

Can I self-host Claude Sonnet 4.6?

No. Anthropic does not publish the weights; Claude Sonnet 4.6 is available only through hosted APIs.

More from Anthropic

Model Context Input /1M Output /1M
Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4 200K $3.00 $15.00
Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.5 200K $3.00 $15.00
Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 1M $2.00 $10.00
Anthropic Claude Opus 5 1M $5.00 $25.00
Anthropic Claude Opus 4.7 1M $5.00 $25.00
Anthropic Claude Opus 4.8 1M $5.00 $25.00
Anthropic Claude Opus 4.6 1M $5.00 $25.00
Anthropic Claude Opus 4.5 200K $5.00 $25.00