Originally published at claudeguide.io/claude-haiku-sonnet-opus-which-model
Haiku vs Sonnet vs Opus: Which Claude Model for Your Use Case (April 2026)
Most teams overspend on Claude API by running Opus for tasks Haiku could handle and overspend on latency by running Haiku for tasks that need Sonnet. The right default is task-dependent, and the answer is almost never "always use the best model." This post is the decision tree, the prices, and nine concrete examples with measured results in 2026.
TL;DR
- Haiku 4.5 ($1/$5 per 1M in/out): classification, extraction, summarization of short inputs, routing, drafting. Default for
PDF guide + 6-sheet Excel cost calculator. Example scenario: $2,100 ā $187/month on a customer support agent.
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