Anthropic Claude API Pricing 2026

Anthropic's Claude models are known for strong reasoning, coding, and safety. In 2026, the Claude 4.6 family represents their latest generation, while older models like Haiku 3 remain available at budget-friendly prices.

Claude pricing is generally higher than OpenAI across comparable tiers, but Anthropic compensates with larger context windows (up to 1M tokens) and what many developers consider superior coding and instruction-following capabilities.

Claude 4.6 (Latest Generation)

• Claude Opus 4.6 ($5.00 input / $25.00 output) — Anthropic's most capable model. 1M context window, 128K max output. Best for complex analysis, research, and creative work.
• Claude Sonnet 4.6 ($3.00 input / $15.00 output) — Widely considered the best coding model available. 1M context, excellent for development workflows.

Claude Haiku (Budget Tier)

Haiku models provide the best value in Anthropic's lineup:

• Claude Haiku 4.5 ($1.00 input / $5.00 output) — Fast, capable, good for production workloads
• Claude Haiku 3.5 ($0.80 input / $4.00 output) — Popular mid-tier option, strong quality-to-cost ratio
• Claude Haiku 3 ($0.25 input / $1.25 output) — Anthropic's cheapest model. Great for classification, extraction, and high-volume tasks.

Prompt Caching Discounts

Anthropic's prompt caching is one of the most aggressive in the industry. Cache reads cost only 10% of base input price:

• Claude Sonnet 4.6: $0.30/M cached (vs $3.00 standard) — 90% savings
• Claude Haiku 3: $0.025/M cached (vs $0.25 standard) — 90% savings

Batch API offers an additional 50% discount, making Claude Haiku 3 batch pricing just $0.125/M input — competitive with the cheapest models on the market.

Legacy Models: Still Available, Often Expensive

Earlier Claude models like Opus 4.1 and Opus 4 remain available at $15.00/M input — 3x the cost of the newer, more capable Opus 4.6. There's rarely a good reason to use these legacy models unless you have specific compatibility requirements.

How Claude Compares

Claude Opus 4.6 ($5.00 input) costs 2x more than GPT-5.4 ($2.50 input) for the flagship tier. At the budget end, Claude Haiku 3 ($0.25/M) is competitive but still 2.5x more expensive than GPT-4o mini ($0.15/M).

The real value proposition for Claude is context window size (1M tokens) and coding quality, particularly with Sonnet 4.6. Many developers pay the premium for these advantages.

For the absolute cheapest option, check DeepSeek's pricing at $0.28/M for their flagship model.