Claude Sonnet 5 Keeps Its $2 / $10 Price: Anthropic Cancels the Planned Increase
Anthropic launched Claude Sonnet 5 on June 30, 2026, at an introductory price of $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, with a scheduled increase to $3 / $15 on September 1. On August 10, 2026, the company changed course: the introductory price became the standard price, and the September increase was cancelled.
Sonnet 5 prices
From Anthropic’s pricing page, checked September 16, 2026, per 1M tokens:
| Rate | Price |
|---|---|
| Input | $2.00 |
| Output | $10.00 |
| 5-minute cache write | $2.50 |
| 1-hour cache write | $4.00 |
| Cache hit | $0.20 |
| Batch input / output | $1.00 / $5.00 |
A request with 1,000 input and 500 output tokens costs $0.007. Sonnet 5 has a 1M-token context window, billed at standard rates across the full window, and up to 128K output tokens. Priority Tier is not available for it.
A newer model that costs less
Sonnet 5 is cheaper than the model it succeeds. Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Sonnet 4.5 still cost $3 input and $15 output, 50% more on both sides. Anthropic’s larger Claude Opus 5, launched July 24, 2026, costs $5 / $25.
There is one cost factor the price list does not show. Anthropic says the tokenizer used by Claude 4.7 and later models produces about 30% more tokens for the same text. Comparing Sonnet 5 with an older Claude model or another vendor on per-token price alone can understate what the same prompt costs.
How long the price is safe
Anthropic lists Sonnet 5 as active and says it will not be retired before June 30, 2027. Retirement dates say nothing about future price changes, but the August decision removes the one increase that had been announced.
Compare Sonnet 5 with the rest of the Claude lineup on our Anthropic API pricing page, or see the full Claude Sonnet 5 model card.