Claude Sonnet 5 vs Claude Haiku 4.5
Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 5 and Anthropic's Claude Haiku 4.5 both target production language workloads, but they price and behave differently. Here is the side-by-side.
Pricing checked against provider documentation on . How we verify
The short answer
Claude Haiku 4.5 is the cheaper option — roughly 2.0x less on a blended workload, and it suits lowest-latency claude responses. Claude Sonnet 5 justifies its premium when you need fast claude-quality reasoning at scale.
Anthropic • Claude 5
$2.00 / $10.00
/ 1M tokens (input / output)
The workhorse Claude tier: a full million tokens of context and adaptive thinking at $2/$10, which undercuts the previous Sonnet 4.6 generation by a third on input while raising the context ceiling fivefold. The default pick for latency-sensitive products that still want Claude's writing and tool-use behaviour.
Anthropic • Claude 4.5
$1.00 / $5.00
/ 1M tokens (input / output)
The fastest model Anthropic ships, still on the Claude 4.5 generation with a 200K window and an early-2025 knowledge cutoff. Worth it when response latency is the product requirement; otherwise Sonnet 5 offers more capability and five times the context for twice the price.
Input price
Claude Haiku 4.5 is 50% cheaper than Claude Sonnet 5 on input tokens.
Output price
Claude Haiku 4.5 is 50% cheaper than Claude Sonnet 5 on output tokens — usually the side that dominates the bill.
Monthly cost at three workload sizes
Standard (non-batch, non-cached) rates. Reasoning models will exceed these figures because thinking tokens bill as output.
| Workload | Claude Sonnet 5 | Claude Haiku 4.5 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Light — 1M in / 200K out | $4 | $2 | $2 |
| Moderate — 10M in / 2M out | $40 | $20 | $20 |
| Heavy — 100M in / 20M out | $400 | $200 | $200 |
Specification comparison
| Attribute | Claude Sonnet 5 | Claude Haiku 4.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Input (/ 1M tokens) | $2.00 | $1.00 |
| Output (/ 1M tokens) | $10.00 | $5.00 |
| Cached input | $0.20 | $0.10 |
| Context window | 1,000,000 tokens | 200,000 tokens |
| Max output | 128,000 tokens | 64,000 tokens |
| Native reasoning | Yes | Yes |
| Knowledge cutoff | 2026-01 | 2025-02 |
| Relative latency | low | low |
| Open weights | No | No |
| API model ID | claude-sonnet-5 | claude-haiku-4-5 |
| Status | stable | stable |
Choose Claude Sonnet 5 if…
- Production chat and copilots
- Long-document analysis
- Tool-heavy agents needing fast turns
- Code review and PR automation
Choose Claude Haiku 4.5 if…
- Real-time chat suggestions
- Lightweight extraction and tagging
- Guardrail and routing calls
- High-frequency background jobs
Frequently asked
Is Claude Sonnet 5 or Claude Haiku 4.5 cheaper?
Claude Haiku 4.5 is cheaper. On a blended 3:1 input-to-output workload it costs about 2.0x less than Claude Sonnet 5.
Which has the larger context window, Claude Sonnet 5 or Claude Haiku 4.5?
Claude Sonnet 5 has the larger window at 1M tokens versus 200K.
Should I use Claude Sonnet 5 or Claude Haiku 4.5?
Pick Claude Sonnet 5 for fast claude-quality reasoning at scale. Pick Claude Haiku 4.5 for lowest-latency claude responses. If cost dominates the decision, Claude Haiku 4.5 wins; if you need the capability ceiling, benchmark both on your own evals before committing.