Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Claude Opus 4.6
Detailed pricing comparison and cost analysis.
Updated March 2026
Cost Simulator
| Feature | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Input Price (1M) | $3.00 | $5.00 |
| Output Price (1M) | $15.00 | $25.00 |
| Context Window | 200,000 | 1,000,000 |
Verdict
Claude Sonnet 4.5 costs $3.00 per 1M input tokens and $15.00 per 1M output tokens. Claude Opus 4.6 costs $5.00 per 1M input tokens and $25.00 per 1M output tokens. Claude Sonnet 4.5 is 40% cheaper on input tokens than Claude Opus 4.6. For output tokens, Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the more affordable option at $15.00/1M vs $25.00.
On context window, Claude Opus 4.6 supports 1,000,000 tokens — meaning it can fit more conversation history, documents, or code in a single request. This matters for RAG pipelines, long document analysis, and agentic workflows where context builds up over many turns.
When to choose Claude Sonnet 4.5
- ✓ You need the lowest input token cost ($ 3.00/1M)
- ✓ Your workload is output-heavy — Claude Sonnet 4.5 generates text cheaper
- ✓ You are already integrated with Anthropic
When to choose Claude Opus 4.6
- ✓ You need a larger context window (1,000,000 tokens)
- ✓ You are already integrated with Anthropic
Use the calculator above to simulate your specific workload and find the exact break-even point. For most applications, the cheapest model is the one that minimises your total monthly bill given your input-to-output token ratio.