Claude Haiku 4.5 vs Claude Sonnet 5
Claude Haiku 4.5 and Claude Sonnet 5 are both current anthropic production-tier models. Claude Haiku 4.5 is meaningfully cheaper at $1 / $5 per 1M. Claude Sonnet 5 has a 1M context window — about 5× the 200k of Claude Haiku 4.5. Claude Sonnet 5 leads on coding, reasoning, general knowledge.
Specs side by side
| Metric | Anthropic Claude Haiku 4.5 | Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 |
|---|---|---|
| Input price (per 1M) | $1 | $3 |
| Output price (per 1M) | $5 | $15 |
| Context window | 200k tokens | 1M tokens |
| Speed tier | fast | balanced |
| Open weights | No | No |
| EU region | Yes | Yes |
| Free tier | No | No |
| Prompt caching | Yes | Yes |
| Vision input | Yes | Yes |
| Extended thinking | No | Yes |
When to choose each
Choose Claude Haiku 4.5 if…
- Cost is a priority ($1 / $5 per 1M vs $3 / $15 per 1M)
Choose Claude Sonnet 5 if…
- You need 1M context (5× more than Claude Haiku 4.5)
- Coding is central to your workload
- Reasoning is central to your workload
Benchmark delta
Claude Haiku 4.5 leads on
Claude Haiku 4.5 has no meaningful benchmark lead in this pair.
Claude Sonnet 5 leads on
- Coding
- Reasoning
- General knowledge
- Long-context retrieval
- Instruction following
- Multilingual
- Vision
- Tool use
FAQ — Claude Haiku 4.5 vs Claude Sonnet 5
Claude Haiku 4.5 vs Claude Sonnet 5 — which is better?
Claude Haiku 4.5 and Claude Sonnet 5 are both current anthropic production-tier models. Claude Haiku 4.5 is meaningfully cheaper at $1 / $5 per 1M. Claude Sonnet 5 has a 1M context window — about 5× the 200k of Claude Haiku 4.5. Claude Sonnet 5 leads on coding, reasoning, general knowledge. The right pick depends on your use case — see "When to choose each" above for a data-driven decision.
How does Claude Haiku 4.5 pricing compare to Claude Sonnet 5?
Claude Haiku 4.5 costs $1 / $5 per 1M vs Claude Sonnet 5 at $3 / $15 per 1M. Claude Haiku 4.5 is cheaper on output tokens by roughly 200%. Both support prompt caching, which reduces effective cost by 80-90% on repeat system prompts.
Does Claude Haiku 4.5 or Claude Sonnet 5 have the bigger context window?
Claude Sonnet 5 has a 1M-token context window — 5× the 200k context of Claude Haiku 4.5. Enough for entire codebases, books, or multi-document RAG.
Is there a free tier for Claude Haiku 4.5 or Claude Sonnet 5?
Claude Haiku 4.5: no — No free API tier; new accounts get starter credits. Claude Sonnet 5: no — Default model on Claude.ai Free/Pro web chat; API requires paid credits.
Which is better for coding — Claude Haiku 4.5 or Claude Sonnet 5?
Claude Sonnet 5 leads on coding benchmarks (Claude Haiku 4.5: 82/100, Claude Sonnet 5: 95/100). For production coding agents also weigh tool-use performance — Claude Haiku 4.5 scores 88, Claude Sonnet 5 scores 96.