Claude Sonnet 4.6

Balanced mid-tier Claude with 1M context at flat rate; prompt caching cuts cached input ~90%, batch 50% cheaper. Now succeeded by Claude Sonnet 5 (June 30, 2026); still available via the API.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 strengths

• Strong coding at lower cost than Opus
• 1M context window
• Fast and reliable
• Excellent for agentic tooling

Pricing & context

Cost guide: a typical call of about 10K input + 2K output tokens costs roughly $0.060 at list prices. Worth modelling against cheaper tiers before committing high-volume traffic.

When to choose Claude Sonnet 4.6

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is best for everyday coding, agents, and production apps wanting Claude quality without flagship pricing. If your workload is more cost-sensitive, weigh it against gpt-oss-120b (≈$0.03 input /1M) first.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 FAQ

How much does Claude Sonnet 4.6 cost?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is priced at $3.00 per 1M input tokens and $15.00 per 1M output tokens (public API list price), with a 1M tokens context window. A typical call of about 10K input and 2K output tokens costs roughly $0.060.

What is Claude Sonnet 4.6 best for?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 by Anthropic is best for everyday coding, agents, and production apps wanting Claude quality without flagship pricing.

How does Claude Sonnet 4.6 pricing compare to Inkling?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 input costs $3.00 per 1M tokens versus ≈$1.00 for Inkling, roughly 3.0x more expensive on input. Output is $15.00 vs ≈$4.05.

Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 multimodal?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 supports text, image.