Claude Sonnet 4.6
The first Sonnet to surpass the prior generation's Opus on coding, with improved consistency and instruction following.
- Context
- 1M tokens
- Max output
- 128K
- Cutoff
- Released
Hosted API price
List price via Anthropic · per 1M tokens
- Input
- $3.00 /1M
- Output
- $15.00 /1M
- Hosted by
-
3 providers
Hosted API pricing
How we price
Order
Providers are listed cheapest input rate first, then by output rate, a tie going to the creator's own listing. A provider that lists the model without a published rate sits at the end.
Prices
Base-tier, on-demand rates in USD per 1M tokens, converted at ECB reference rates where a provider publishes in another currency. Cached-input and batch rates show only where a provider publishes them. "Cheapest" marks the one provider with the lowest input and output pair; a tie wears no badge.
Cost
Input rate times the input tokens plus output rate times the output tokens, at the monthly volume set above the table. Cached-input, batch, long-context and reasoning-token billing are not modelled.
Transparency and funding
- Affiliates: Affiliate links are marked. We may earn a commission if you click them, but commissions never affect the order.
Every provider serving Claude Sonnet 4.6, cheapest input first. Set your monthly volume to see what each would bill.
| Provider | Input /1M | Output /1M | Cached input /1M | Cost at 10M in + 2M out | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Anthropic
Creator
|
$3.00 | $15.00 | $0.30 | $60.00 | Visit website |
|
DigitalOcean
|
$3.00 | $15.00 | $0.30 | $60.00 | Visit website |
|
Replicate
|
$3.00 | $15.00 | $60.00 | Visit website |
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 | Input /1M | Output /1M | Context | Cutoff | vs Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
GPT-4o
OpenAI
|
$3.75 | $2.50 | $10.00 | 128K | Oct 2023 | −25% |
|
GPT-5.2
OpenAI
|
$3.7917 | $1.75 | $14.00 | 400K | Aug 2025 | −24% |
|
GPT-5.3-Codex
OpenAI
|
$3.7917 | $1.75 | $14.00 | 400K | Aug 2025 | −24% |
|
GPT-5.4
OpenAI
|
$4.5833 | $2.50 | $15.00 | 1M | Aug 2025 | −8% |
|
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Anthropic
|
$5.00 | $3.00 | $15.00 | 200K | Jan 2025 | 0% |
|
Claude Sonnet 4.6
This model
Anthropic
|
$5.00 | $3.00 | $15.00 | 1M | Aug 2025 | |
|
Claude Opus 4.5
Anthropic
|
$8.3333 | $5.00 | $25.00 | 200K | May 2025 | +67% |
|
Claude Opus 4.6
Anthropic
|
$8.3333 | $5.00 | $25.00 | 1M | May 2025 | +67% |
|
Claude Opus 4.7
Anthropic
|
$8.3333 | $5.00 | $25.00 | 1M | Jan 2026 | +67% |
|
Claude Opus 4.8
Anthropic
|
$8.3333 | $5.00 | $25.00 | 1M | Jan 2026 | +67% |
|
Claude Opus 5
Anthropic
|
$8.3333 | $5.00 | $25.00 | 1M | May 2026 | +67% |
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.
Capabilities
What Claude Sonnet 4.6 accepts and can do, as published by Anthropic.
- Text Accepts and generates natural-language text.
- Image Accepts images as input alongside text.
- 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.
Common 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
-
Claude Sonnet 4
200K context · cutoff Mar 2025
From $3.00 / $15.00 /1M in / out at the cheapest provider
-
Claude Sonnet 4.5
200K context · cutoff Jan 2025
From $3.00 / $15.00 /1M in / out at the cheapest provider
-
Claude Sonnet 5
1M context · cutoff Jan 2026
From $2.00 / $10.00 /1M in / out at the cheapest provider
-
Claude Opus 5
1M context · cutoff May 2026
From $5.00 / $25.00 /1M in / out at the cheapest provider
-
Claude Opus 4.7
1M context · cutoff Jan 2026
From $5.00 / $25.00 /1M in / out at the cheapest provider
-
Claude Opus 4.8
1M context · cutoff Jan 2026
From $5.00 / $25.00 /1M in / out at the cheapest provider
-
Claude Opus 4.6
1M context · cutoff May 2025
From $5.00 / $25.00 /1M in / out at the cheapest provider
-
Claude Opus 4.5
200K context · cutoff May 2025
From $5.00 / $25.00 /1M in / out at the cheapest provider