Claude Sonnet 5 is more expensive (around +15%) per task than Opus 4.8 and much more expensive (2X) than Sonnet 4.6, eve…

Rohan Paul Twitter · Rohan Paul (@rohanpaul_ai) · 2026-06-30

Claude Sonnet 5 costs approximately $2.29 per task on the Intelligence Index—twice Sonnet 4.6 and 15% more than Opus 4.8—because higher token usage offsets its lower per-token price, though promotional pricing of $2/$10 per million tokens applies until August 31, 2026.

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Anthropic Launches Claude Sonnet 5: Agentic Performance, New Tokenizer, and Per-Task Cost Surprises

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Topics: claude-sonnet-5ai-pricingtoken-economicsmodel-cost

Claims

Claude Sonnet 5 costs approximately $2.29 per task on the Intelligence Index, roughly 2x Sonnet 4.6 and 15% more than Opus 4.8.
The higher per-task cost is driven entirely by increased token usage rather than higher per-token prices.
Sonnet 5 is one of the most costly models to run among those benchmarked, behind only Claude Fable 5.
Promotional pricing of $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens applies until August 31, 2026, rising to $3/$15 from September 1, 2026.

Key quotes

Claude Sonnet 5 costs $2.29 per task on the Intelligence Index, a ~2x increase compared to Sonnet 4.6 and ~15% more than Claude Opus 4.8.

This is driven entirely by increased token usage, making Claude Sonnet 5 one of the most costly models to run, behind only Claude Fable 5.

Sonnet 5 works harder and talks/thinks more, so the final bill becomes bigger even though each token is cheaper.