Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Claude Opus 4.6
Claude Opus 4.6 costs less on both: $1.50 in and $7.50 out per million tokens, against $1.80 in and $9.00 out for Claude Sonnet 4.6. Both on one key at UplinkSwitch, each next to its developer's list price.
Prices · per million tokens, USD
| Tokens | Claude Sonnet 4.6claude-sonnet-4-6 | Claude Opus 4.6claude-opus-4-6 |
|---|---|---|
| Input | $1.80Anthropic lists $3.00 · 40% under | $1.50Anthropic lists $5.00 · 70% under |
| Cached input | $0.09Anthropic lists $0.30 · 70% under | $0.15Anthropic lists $0.50 · 70% under |
| Output | $9.00Anthropic lists $15.00 · 40% under | $7.50Anthropic lists $25.00 · 70% under |
| Context window | 1,000,000 tokens | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Max output | 128,000 tokens | 128,000 tokens |
| Input | text, image | text, image |
| Released | 2026-02-17 | 2026-02-05 |
| Anthropic lifecycle | active, retires no sooner than 2027-02-17 | active, retires no sooner than 2027-02-05 |
| Formats | Anthropic SDK, OpenAI SDK | Anthropic SDK, OpenAI SDK |
| Developer | Anthropic | Anthropic |
List price: each developer's published rate, read October 2026. A model with no cached rate bills cached tokens at its input rate. Live from GET https://api.uplinkswitch.com/v1/catalog. Lifecycle from Anthropic's model deprecations, read 2026-10-19.
What the same work costs · USD, here and at list
| Work | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 chat requests | $8.10list $13.50 | $6.75list $22.50 |
| 100 long documents | $10.80list $18.00 | $9.00list $30.00 |
| A month of both, daily | $567.00list $945.00 | $472.50list $1,575.00 |
A chat request is 2,000 input and 500 output tokens; a long document is 50,000 in and 2,000 out; the month is 1,000 chats and 100 documents a day for 30 days, uncached. Over that month Claude Opus 4.6 costs $94.50 less here.
Newest in the line
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 is the newest in Claude Sonnet 4.6's line: $1.20 in and $3.00 out per million tokens here, against $2.00 and $10.00 at list. Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Claude Sonnet 4.6.
- Claude Opus 5.5 is the newest in Claude Opus 4.6's line: $2.10 in and $6.00 out per million tokens here, against $4.00 and $20.00 at list.
Same key, same URL
One base URL and one key serve both models. The request below calls Claude Sonnet 4.6; put claude-opus-4-6 in the model field to call Claude Opus 4.6 instead.
shell
curl https://api.uplinkswitch.com/v1/chat/completions \
-H "authorization: Bearer sk-uplink-live-..." \
-H "content-type: application/json" \
-d '{"model":"claude-sonnet-4-6","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hello"}]}'Model pages: Claude Sonnet 4.6, Claude Opus 4.6. Pricing by family: Claude. More comparisons: Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Claude Sonnet 4.6, Claude Sonnet 5 vs Claude Sonnet 4.6, Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Opus 4.7, Claude Opus 4.6 vs Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview.
Questions
- Which costs less, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Claude Opus 4.6?
- Claude Opus 4.6 costs less on both: $1.50 in and $7.50 out per million tokens, against $1.80 in and $9.00 out for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
- Can I switch between them by changing the model id?
- Yes. Both answer in the Anthropic SDK and OpenAI SDK format at the same base URL with the same key. Change the model id from claude-sonnet-4-6 to claude-opus-4-6 and nothing else.
- Is there a subscription?
- No. Prepaid credit from $10, with no subscription or monthly fee. Each top-up locks your prices for 30 days.
- Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 better than Claude Opus 4.6?
- Better depends on the job; this page compares what the catalog can measure. Claude Opus 4.6 costs less on both: $1.50 in and $7.50 out per million tokens, against $1.80 in and $9.00 out for Claude Sonnet 4.6. Both take 1,000,000 tokens of context. Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the newer release. Both run on the same key, so the fair test is your own prompt sent to each model id.
- Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 deprecated?
- No. Anthropic lists Sonnet 4.6 as active, retiring no sooner than February 17, 2027. The deprecated Sonnet is 4.5, which retires on November 30, 2026 (Anthropic model deprecations, read 2026-10-19).