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Claude Sonnet 4.6

Anthropic

Optimal balance of intelligence, cost, and speed with 1M context

Input price$3.00 / 1M tokens
Output price$15.00 / 1M tokens
Context window1M tokens
Last updated2026-04-20

Quick calculator

tokens
tokens
req/day
Per request
$0.0105
Daily
$105.00
Monthly
$3,150.00
per month · 30-day estimate
Yearly
$38,325.00

Tips to reduce cost

  • →Use prompt caching to reuse repeated system prompts
  • →Trim whitespace and reduce verbose instructions
  • →Use a smaller model for classification or routing tasks
  • →Batch async requests to get 50% discount (OpenAI/Anthropic)
  • →Cache identical requests at the application layer

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Compared at your current token settings

About Claude Sonnet 4.6

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is a premium large language model from anthropic, priced at $3/1M input tokens and $15/1M output tokens. It is priced above the market average and best suited for balanced performance. The 1M context window makes it suitable for very long documents, large codebases, and book-length inputs.

For most production workloads, the cost breakdown is dominated by input tokens (system prompts, context, retrieved documents) rather than output. At this price point, Claude Sonnet 4.6 is positioned for use cases where quality justifies the premium over cheaper alternatives.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 supports prompt caching at $0.3/1M — a 90% discount on repeated input tokens. For applications with a fixed system prompt or repeated document context (RAG, chatbots, agents), enabling caching is the single highest-leverage cost optimization available.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Claude Sonnet 4.6 cost per 1,000 tokens?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 costs $0.0030 per 1,000 input tokens and $0.0150 per 1,000 output tokens.
What is Claude Sonnet 4.6's context window?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 supports a context window of 1M tokens, which is suitable for very long documents, large codebases, and extended multi-turn conversations.
How does Claude Sonnet 4.6 compare to GPT-4o on price?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is priced above the market average on input tokens. At $3/1M input vs $2.50/1M for GPT-4o, the cost difference becomes significant at scale — 10,000 requests/day with 1,000 input tokens each costs $900/month with Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs $750/month with GPT-4o.
Does Claude Sonnet 4.6 support prompt caching?
Yes. Claude Sonnet 4.6 supports prompt caching at $0.3/1M tokens — a 90% discount on repeated input. This is especially effective for RAG pipelines and chatbots with large system prompts that repeat across requests.

Compare Claude Sonnet 4.6 with other models

Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Grok 3Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs GPT-4oClaude Sonnet 4.6 vs Gemini 3 ProClaude Sonnet 4.6 vs Llama 3.1 405BClaude Sonnet 4.6 vs GPT-4.1Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Magistral Medium