AI Models · Paid vs Paid

Claude Sonnet 4.6 Paid vs Claude Haiku 4.5 Paid

Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Claude Haiku 4.5 compared — price per token, context window, multimodality, openness and which to choose. Full 2026 breakdown.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 — full profile ›  ·  Claude Haiku 4.5 — full profile ›

Prices & specs refreshed from live data · OpenSourceAI.tech

Open-model prices = cheapest provider via OpenRouter; official maker rates may be higher.

Choose Claude Haiku 4.5 for the lower output price ($5/M vs $15/M). Choose Claude Sonnet 4.6 if you need the larger 1M context window.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Claude Haiku 4.5 specs

SpecClaude Sonnet 4.6Claude Haiku 4.5
MakerAnthropicAnthropic
TypeProprietaryProprietary
Context window1M tokens200K tokens
Input price$3/M$1/M
Output price$15/M$5/M
Vision / multimodalYesYes
Tool / function callingYesYes
Self-hostableNo (API only)No (API only)
LicenseProprietaryProprietary

Feature comparison

CapabilityClaude Sonnet 4.6Claude Haiku 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 Haiku 4.5

Independent benchmark scores measured by Artificial Analysis. Higher is better (except latency).

Claude Sonnet 4.6
Claude Haiku 4.5
Intelligence index
47.2
–
Coding index
63
–
GPQA
87.5%
–
Humanity's Last Exam
30%
–
Long Context Reasoning
70.7%
–
SciCode
46.8%
–
IFBench
56.6%
–
τ²-Bench
75.7%
–
τ-Bench Banking
30.5%
–
Terminal-Bench
71.2%
–
Terminal-Bench Hard
53%
–
Speed
69.6 tok/s
–
Latency
51.32s
–
Intelligence per $
7.9
–

Benchmark data by Artificial Analysis.

How Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Claude Haiku 4.5 score

🤝 Neck and neck on these criteria (3.1 vs 3.1 / 5).
CriterionClaude Sonnet 4.6Claude Haiku 4.5
Cost-efficiency3.04.0
Context window5.04.0
Openness1.51.5
Self-hosting1.01.0
Multimodality5.05.0

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

Anthropic · Proprietary

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 Haiku 4.5 Paid

Anthropic · Proprietary

Claude Haiku 4.5 is Anthropic’s fastest and most efficient model, delivering near-frontier intelligence at a fraction of the cost and latency of larger Claude models. Matching Claude Sonnet 4’s performance...

Other models in these families

These variants are tracked but not compared here — one page per family keeps the comparison readable.

Other variants tracked
Claude Sonnet 4.5Claude Sonnet 5

Frequently asked questions

Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Claude Haiku 4.5 — which is cheaper?

Claude Haiku 4.5 is cheaper on output ($5/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 Haiku 4.5 — which should I pick in 2026?

Choose Claude Haiku 4.5 for the lower output price ($5/M vs $15/M). Choose Claude Sonnet 4.6 if you need the larger 1M context window.

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