Strong coding quality with 1M context at $3/1M input
Default model in Cursor and Windsurf, the two most popular AI coding editors
Best writing quality in its price tier — tone, long-form clarity, editorial polish
Weaknesses
Claude Opus 4.7 has a higher current premium coding ceiling
GPT-5.5 or GPT-5.4 are better picks when OpenAI computer-use workflows are the priority
Real-world use cases
What people actually use Claude Sonnet 4.6 for.
Daily coding in Cursor — debugging, refactoring, and feature implementation
Drafting polished client reports, strategy memos, and long-form editorial content
Answering research questions with up to 1M tokens of document context
How Claude Sonnet 4.6 compares
The nearest models people weigh against it, and what actually separates them.
vs Claude Fable 5.1 — Against Claude Fable 5.1 (Anthropic), Claude Sonnet 4.6 runs about 70% cheaper per token and answers faster. Take Claude Sonnet 4.6 unless you specifically need what Claude Fable 5.1 does better.
vs Claude Fable 5 — Against Claude Fable 5 (Anthropic), Claude Sonnet 4.6 runs about 70% cheaper per token and answers faster. Take Claude Sonnet 4.6 unless you specifically need what Claude Fable 5 does better.
vs Claude Opus 4.8 — Against Claude Opus 4.8 (Anthropic), Claude Sonnet 4.6 runs about 40% cheaper per token and answers faster. Take Claude Sonnet 4.6 unless you specifically need what Claude Opus 4.8 does better.
Price History
Claude Sonnet 4.6 pricing over time
→0% since May 30
90 data points · tracked daily since May 30, 2026
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Start using Claude Sonnet 4.6
Daily coding, writing, and long-document work at a strong price-to-quality ratio. Start free — no card required.
Anthropic's September 1, 2026 frontier release and the new capability ceiling for coding, agents, and scientific work. Base pricing is unchanged at $10/$50, but cache reads dropped 75% to $0.25/1M — roughly 25% cheaper on typical workloads and up to 45% cheaper on agentic ones. 1M context, 128K output, adaptive thinking always on.
Verdict
New frontier leader — better than Fable 5 on every published benchmark, and cheaper to run.
Quality score
98%
Pricing
$10.00/1M in
$50.00/1M out
Speed
Deliberate
2/5 speed
Context
1M tokens
Released September 1, 2026 alongside Claude Mythos 5.1, the first update to the Mythos-class line since Fable 5 on June 9. API ID claude-fable-5-1; generally available on the Claude API, Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Foundry. Published launch numbers (Fable 5.1 / Fable 5 / Opus 5 / GPT-5.6 Sol): Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 52.6 / 24.7 / 29.0 / 22.4; Terminal-Bench 4.0 55.8 / 42.0 / 52.3 / 37.3; CursorBench 3.2.0 73.4 / 70.5 / 70.0 / 67.2; AutomationBench 31.4 / 17.1 / 26.9 / 19.6; OSWorld 2.0 strict 41.7 / 36.1 / 39.6; Humanity's Last Exam (no tools) 60.9 / 57.8 / 56.6; GDPval-AA v2 1853 / 1723 / 1824 / 1711. GDPval-AA v2 is rescaled from the v1 numbers quoted on the Fable 5 page and is not directly comparable to them.
Anthropic's new Mythos-class flagship and the most capable coding model anyone can use — 80.3% SWE-Bench Pro, an 11-point jump over Opus 4.8. 1M context, 128K output, native parallel subagents. Released June 9, 2026.
Verdict
Superseded by Fable 5.1 — still 80.3% SWE-Bench Pro, but 5.1 is better and cheaper to run.
Quality score
98%
Pricing
$10.00/1M in
$50.00/1M out
Speed
Deliberate
2/5 speed
Context
1M tokens
Launched June 9, 2026 as the public, Mythos-class release. Available on the Claude API, Microsoft Foundry, and Google Vertex AI. Free for all users until June 22, 2026. Same underlying model as Claude Mythos 5, with safeguards that block specific high-risk cyber responses. Superseded by Claude Fable 5.1 on September 1, 2026 — same $10/$50 base pricing, cache reads cut from $1.00 to $0.25 per 1M tokens.
SWE-Bench Pro 80.3%Mythos-classParallel subagentsAgenticLong contextPremiumSuperseded
Best for
The hardest coding tasks, autonomous multi-step agents, and frontier-grade reasoning
Anthropic's newest Opus flagship — 69.2% SWE-Bench Pro, 88.6% SWE-Bench Verified, 1890 Arena Elo (121 pts ahead of GPT-5.5), and native parallel subagents. Same $5/$25 price as Opus 4.7.
Verdict
Best value premium coder — frontier-grade at half of Fable 5's price.
Quality score
97%
Pricing
$5.00/1M in
$25.00/1M out
Speed
Deliberate
2/5 speed
Context
1M tokens
Launched May 27, 2026. Available on Claude API, AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, Microsoft Foundry, and GitHub Copilot. Fast mode available at $10/$50 per 1M tokens.
CodingParallel subagentsAgenticLong contextPremiumBest value premium
Best for
Hardest coding tasks, parallel agentic workflows, and high-fidelity vision
Claude Sonnet 4.6 costs $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens on the API, with cached input at $0.3 per million. A month of 10M input and 2M output tokens runs about $60.00 at list price, before any batch or caching discounts.
What is the context window of Claude Sonnet 4.6?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 has a 1M tokens context window, with up to 128k tokens of output per response. That is the total of prompt plus response the model can hold in one request.
What is the knowledge cutoff of Claude Sonnet 4.6?
Claude Sonnet 4.6's training data runs through August 31, 2025, and the model was released on February 17, 2026. For anything after that date it needs web search or documents in the prompt.
What is Claude Sonnet 4.6 best for?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is best for daily coding, writing, and long-document work at a strong price-to-quality ratio. It is a strong fit when that workflow matters more than the tradeoffs around premium pricing and balanced speed.
When should I avoid Claude Sonnet 4.6?
You specifically need desktop-control capabilities (GPT-5.5/GPT-5.4) or the absolute highest coding ceiling (Opus 4.7).
What is a cheaper alternative to Claude Sonnet 4.6?
Grok 4.5 (xAI) at $2.00/1M/1M input against Claude Sonnet 4.6's $3.00/1M/1M — roughly 56% less per token all in. Best cost-per-solved-task coding agent — efficiency over ceiling. Compare it first if Claude Sonnet 4.6's pricing is the thing stopping you.
What is a faster alternative to Claude Sonnet 4.6?
Claude Fable 5.1 — deliberate against Claude Sonnet 4.6's balanced, with 1M tokens of context. Worth the swap when response time is what your users notice rather than the last few points of reasoning depth.
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