Claude Sonnet 4.6 Paid vs Claude Sonnet 4.5 Paid
Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Claude Sonnet 4.5 compared — price per token, context window, multimodality, openness and which to choose. Full 2026 breakdown.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 — full profile › · Claude Sonnet 4.5 — full profile ›
Prices & specs refreshed from live data · olud.ai
Open-model prices = cheapest provider via OpenRouter; official maker rates may be higher.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Claude Sonnet 4.5 specs
| Spec | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Type | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 1M tokens | 1M tokens |
| Input price | $3/M | $3/M |
| Output price | $15/M | $15/M |
| Vision / multimodal | Yes | Yes |
| Tool / function calling | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hostable | No (API only) | No (API only) |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary |
Feature comparison
| Capability | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Open weights (downloadable) | ✗ | ✗ |
| Self-hostable | ✗ | ✗ |
| Runs fully offline | ✗ | ✗ |
| Vision / multimodal | ✓ | ✓ |
| Tool / function calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| 1M+ context window | ✓ | ✓ |
Benchmarks: Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Claude Sonnet 4.5
Independent benchmark scores measured by Artificial Analysis. Higher is better (except latency).
Benchmark data by Artificial Analysis.
How Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Claude Sonnet 4.5 score
| Criterion | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Cost-efficiency | 3.0 | 3.0 |
| Context window | 5.0 | 5.0 |
| Openness | 1.5 | 1.5 |
| Self-hosting | 1.0 | 1.0 |
| Multimodality | 5.0 | 5.0 |
Scores come from live data — output price (cost), context length, open vs closed weights (openness & self-hosting) and vision/tool support (multimodality). Raw task quality isn't scored here; it depends on your benchmark — see the verdict.
What each model is
Claude Sonnet 4.6 Paid
Sonnet 4.6 is Anthropic's most capable Sonnet-class model yet, with frontier performance across coding, agents, and professional work. It excels at iterative development, complex codebase navigation, end-to-end project management with...
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Paid
Claude Sonnet 4.5 is Anthropic’s most advanced Sonnet model to date, optimized for real-world agents and coding workflows. It delivers state-of-the-art performance on coding benchmarks such as SWE-bench Verified, with...
Other models in these families
These variants are tracked but not compared here — one page per family keeps the comparison readable.
Frequently asked questions
Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Claude Sonnet 4.5 — which is cheaper?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is cheaper on output ($15/M vs $15/M).
Which has the larger context window?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 offers the larger context window (1M tokens).
Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Claude Sonnet 4.5 — which should I pick in 2026?
Choose Claude Sonnet 4.6 for the lower output price ($15/M vs $15/M). It also gives you the larger 1M context window.
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