Claude 4 Haiku is Anthropic's cheapest model at $0.8/1M input tokens — 95% less than the flagship Claude Opus 4.6. It is also the best capability-per-dollar pick in the lineup.
The shortest way to see the safest default, the lower-cost option, and the specialist pick before you read deeper.
Claude 4 Haiku is the safest overall answer here when you want the strongest default instead of the lowest list price.
Meta: Llama 3.1 8B Instruct is the lower-cost option to start with when you still need useful output at scale.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the better pick when response speed matters more than maximum reasoning depth.
Claude 4 Haiku is the lowest-cost Anthropic model: $0.8/1M input, $4/1M output.
Claude 4 Haiku is the best capability-per-dollar pick (budget score 88/100).
Claude Opus 4.6 costs 19x more on input — reserve it for work where quality is the bottleneck.
Choose Claude 4 Haiku for high-volume, low-stakes tasks like classification, extraction, and drafts.
Choose Claude 4 Haiku as the everyday default if you want one budget model.
Route only the hardest tasks to Claude Opus 4.6 — a two-tier setup usually cuts spend 60–80%.
Switch the scoring lens to see whether the top answer changes when you care more about cost, speed, or long-document work.
Anthropic / Premium / Jun 9, 2026
New global #1 — 80.3% SWE-Bench Pro, the most capable model generally available.
Ranks models by the broadest mix of coding, writing, research, and long-context usefulness.
You are latency- or cost-sensitive, or your tasks don't need frontier-level reasoning — Opus 4.8 at half the price is plenty.
The fastest way to see where the recommendation shifts when your priority changes.
Best low-cost writing option for fast-moving content teams.
Best daily driver for coding and writing — the model most developers actually reach for.
New #1 on SWE-Bench Pro — parallel subagents, same price as Opus 4.7.
Best premium model for coding agents and high-stakes engineering work.
New global #1 — 80.3% SWE-Bench Pro, the most capable model generally available.
The frontier ceiling — same model as Fable 5, safeguards lifted, partner-only.
Fastest Anthropic model with better-than-expected writing quality
Good for support, marketing ops, and editing passes at scale
Affordable for high-frequency team usage
Less strong on deep reasoning and coding than larger models
Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is now cheaper with a larger context window
UseRightAI recommendations are based on practical decision factors people actually feel in day-to-day use.
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Claude 4 Haiku at $0.8/1M input and $4/1M output tokens. Best low-cost writing option for fast-moving content teams.
Claude 4 Haiku is the best capability-per-dollar pick in Anthropic's lineup (budget score 88/100). It handles fast budget writing well — step up to Claude Opus 4.6 only where quality visibly falls short.
Claude 4 Haiku costs $0.8/1M input vs $15/1M for Claude Opus 4.6 — a 95% saving on input tokens.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 — 1M tokens at $3/1M input.