Claude API Pricing Per Million Tokens: All Models (Oct 2026)

I am the founder of PromptUnit. This post first appeared on the PromptUnit blog, where it is kept up to date.

Claude API pricing is per million tokens (MTok), with separate rates for input and output. As of October 14, 2026, Anthropic's pricing page lists four current models: Claude Haiku 5.5 at $0.10 input and $0.50 output (for prompts up to 100,000 tokens), Sonnet 5.5 at $2 and $10, Opus 5.5 at $4 and $20, and Fable 5.1 at $10 and $50. The Batch API halves those prices, and a cache read costs between 2.5% and 10% of the input price, depending on the model.

This guide lists every model's rates, recomputes four common workloads on the current models with the arithmetic shown, and covers the costs that sit outside the per-token table: long prompts on Haiku 5.5, the tokenizer change, US-only inference, fast mode, web search and code execution. Every Claude price below comes from Anthropic's documentation, read on October 14, 2026.

Claude API prices for every current model

Anthropic's models overview names four current models. Sonnet 5 and Haiku 4.5 are now legacy models but still available, so they are in the table too. Prices are per million tokens on the Claude API with global routing, which is the default.

A few things the table does not show:

• Sonnet 5's price is now permanent. Sonnet 5 launched at $2 and $10 as introductory pricing through August 31, 2026. Anthropic has made that the standard price, and the planned rise to $3 and $15 on September 1 will not happen.
• Thinking tokens are output tokens. Thinking is on by default on Fable 5.1, Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5.5, Sonnet 5 and Haiku 5.5, and it cannot be turned off on Fable 5.1 and Opus 5.5. Anthropic's thinking docs say the reasoning tokens are billed as output tokens even when the thinking text is not returned to you. The effort parameter is the control: Opus 5.5 and Haiku 5.5 default to medium, the other models to high, and low spends the fewest tokens.
• Haiku 4.5 is legacy, not deprecated. Anthropic's model deprecations page lists its retirement as not sooner than October 15, 2026, and Anthropic gives at least 60 days' notice before retiring a publicly released model. It also has the smallest context window (200K) and needs at least 4,096 tokens before a prompt can be cached.

Legacy and retired models

Older models still run on the Claude API at their own prices unless they are marked retired.

Retired on the Claude API: Opus 4.1 and Sonnet 4 (Anthropic's pricing page lists them as retired except on Bedrock and Google Cloud), and Opus 4 and Haiku 3.5 (retired except on Google Cloud). Haiku 3.5 was retired on February 19, 2026, so Google Cloud is the only place Anthropic still lists for it.

Claude Mythos is a separate model, not another name for Fable

Claude Mythos 5.1 and Mythos 5 are separate models. They have the same listed token prices as Fable 5.1 and Fable 5, but they are available only to organizations verified through Anthropic's verification programs, such as the Cyber Verification Program. What Claude Mythos costs and how its price changed covers the details.

Same text, more tokens: the tokenizer change

Anthropic's pricing page says Claude 4.7 and later models use a newer tokenizer that produces approximately 30% more tokens for the same text, and that the exact increase depends on the content. Sonnet 4.6 and earlier models use the previous tokenizer, and the Haiku 5.5 overview says the same text counts as about 30% more tokens on Haiku 5.5 than on Haiku 4.5.

So per-token prices overstate the saving when you move from an older model to a newer one. These estimates assume the full 30%; your own content may differ:

• Sonnet 4.6 to Sonnet 5.5. The per-token price drops by a third ($3 to $2 input, $15 to $10 output). With 30% more tokens, the same task costs 2 x 1.3 = 2.6 against 3, about 13% less. This is an estimate, not a measurement.
• Haiku 4.5 to Haiku 5.5 (prompts up to 100K tokens). 0.10 x 1.3 = 0.13 against 1.00, about 87% less per task. Also an estimate.
• Opus 4.6 or 4.5 to Opus 5.5. 4 x 1.3 = 5.2 against 5, about 4% more per task. An estimate again.
• Opus 4.7 or 4.8 to Opus 5.5. Both sides use the newer tokenizer, so the same input costs 20% less. Output length still depends on the model and the effort setting.

To get your own number, run a sample of real prompts through the token counting endpoint with each model's ID.

What four common workloads cost on current models

Each scenario uses 30-day months and token counts as the priced model counts them. Output tokens include any thinking tokens.

Scenario 1: customer support chat. 500 input and 200 output tokens per call, 10,000 calls a day.

• Haiku 5.5: input is 500 x 10,000 = 5 million tokens x $0.10 = $0.50 a day. Output is 200 x 10,000 = 2 million tokens x $0.50 = $1.00 a day. Total $1.50 a day, $45 a month.
• Sonnet 5.5: 5 million x $2 = $10, plus 2 million x $10 = $20. Total $30 a day, $900 a month, 20 times the Haiku 5.5 bill.
• If you run this on Haiku 4.5 today, it costs 5 million x $1 = $5 plus 2 million x $5 = $10, so $15 a day or $450 a month. If your 500 and 200 were counted on Haiku 4.5, expect about 650 and 260 on Haiku 5.5 (an estimate): 6.5 million x $0.10 = $0.65 plus 2.6 million x $0.50 = $1.30, so $1.95 a day, about $59 a month.

The price gap does not tell you whether Haiku 5.5 answers your customers well enough. Test it on a sample of your own conversations before you switch.

Scenario 2: code review assistant. 3,000 input and 800 output tokens per call, 1,000 calls a day.

• Sonnet 5.5: 3 million x $2 = $6, plus 0.8 million x $10 = $8. Total $14 a day, $420 a month.
• Opus 5.5: 3 million x $4 = $12, plus 0.8 million x $20 = $16. Total $28 a day, $840 a month.
• Haiku 5.5: 3 million x $0.10 = $0.30, plus 0.8 million x $0.50 = $0.40. Total $0.70 a day, $21 a month.
• Coming from Sonnet 4.6, the same counts cost 3 million x $3 = $9 plus 0.8 million x $15 = $12, so $21 a day or $630 a month. With 30% more tokens on Sonnet 5.5 (3,900 and 1,040 per call): 3.9 million x $2 = $7.80 plus 1.04 million x $10 = $10.40, so $18.20 a day or $546 a month. That is about 13% less, not the 33% the per-token prices suggest, and it is an estimate.

Scenario 3: long document analysis. 10,000 input and 2,000 output tokens per call, 100 calls a day.

• Opus 5.5: 1 million x $4 = $4, plus 0.2 million x $20 = $4. Total $8 a day, $240 a month. At 1,000 calls a day: $80 a day, $2,400 a month.
• Fable 5.1: 1 million x $10 = $10, plus 0.2 million x $50 = $10. Total $20 a day, $600 a month.
• If the results can wait for the Batch API: $120 a month on Opus 5.5, $300 on Fable 5.1.

Scenario 4: very long prompts on Haiku 5.5. 150,000 input and 2,000 output tokens per call, 100 calls a day.

• Above 100,000 prompt tokens, Haiku 5.5 charges $0.50 and $2.50: 15 million x $0.50 = $7.50, plus 0.2 million x $2.50 = $0.50. Total $8 a day, $240 a month.
• At the lower rates the same tokens would cost 15 million x $0.10 = $1.50 plus 0.2 million x $0.50 = $0.10, so $1.60 a day. Crossing the threshold puts the whole request on the higher rates, which are 5 times the lower ones.
• Sonnet 5.5 for the same work: 15 million x $2 = $30, plus 0.2 million x $10 = $2. Total $32 a day, $960 a month, so Haiku 5.5 still costs a quarter as much here.

The threshold is sharp. A 99,000-token prompt costs 99,000 x $0.10 / 1 million = $0.0099 of input; a 101,000-token prompt costs 101,000 x $0.50 / 1 million = $0.0505, about 5 times as much for 2% more text. Cache reads and cache writes count toward the 100,000, so caching part of a long prompt does not keep a request under it.

How prompt caching changes the bill

Prompt caching stores a prompt prefix so later requests read it at a fraction of the input price. There are two ways to turn it on. Automatic caching takes a single cache_control field at the top level of the request, and the cache point moves forward on its own as a conversation grows. Explicit breakpoints put cache_control on individual blocks, up to 4 per request.

A worked example: a 2,000-token system prompt on Sonnet 5.5, sent with 50,000 calls a day.

• Without caching: 2,000 x 50,000 = 100 million tokens x $2 = $200 a day.
• With caching: 100 million x $0.10 = $10 a day in cache reads. One cache write costs 2,000 x $2.50 / 1 million = $0.005. At about 35 calls a minute, the 5-minute cache rarely expires, because each read refreshes it at no extra cost.
• The saving is about $190 a day, or $5,700 a month, on that part of the input.
• The same prompt on Fable 5.1 costs 100 million x $10 = $1,000 a day uncached and 100 million x $0.25 = $25 a day from the cache.

Four rules from the prompt caching docs decide whether this works for you:

• Minimum length. The cached prefix must be at least 512 tokens on Fable 5.1, Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku 5.5; 1,024 on Sonnet 5, Sonnet 4.6 and Opus 4.8; 2,048 on Opus 4.7; and 4,096 on Haiku 4.5, Opus 4.6 and Opus 4.5. Shorter prefixes are not cached, so a 500-token prompt like the one in Scenario 1 would not qualify.
• Exact prefix. The cache covers tools, system prompt and messages, in that order, up to the breakpoint. A timestamp or user ID inside that prefix changes it on every request, and you pay for a fresh write each time.
• Timing. The lifetime is counted from the start of the request that writes or reads the entry, not from the end of the response.
• Break-even. Anthropic says that at the 0.1x read price, a 5-minute write pays for itself after one cache read and a 1-hour write after two.

The multipliers stack with the Batch API discount and with data residency pricing. For a side-by-side with OpenAI's caching, see prompt caching on OpenAI and Anthropic.

Batch API: half price if you can wait

The Message Batches API charges 50% of the standard price on input and output. Anthropic says most batches finish within an hour. Results are available once every request is done or after 24 hours, whichever comes first, and requests that are not processed within 24 hours expire without charge. One batch holds up to 100,000 requests or 256 MB.

Batch and caching discounts combine. Because a batch can take longer than 5 minutes, Anthropic suggests the 1-hour cache for context shared across a batch. Fast mode is not available with the Batch API. Which workloads to move to batch goes through the decision.

Costs outside the token table

What these look like in practice:

• US-only inference puts Sonnet 5.5 at $2.20 input and $11 output. It applies to input, output, cache writes and cache reads, and on Haiku 5.5 also to the over-100K rates. Haiku 4.5 does not accept the parameter.
• Fast mode gives up to 2.5x higher output tokens per second at twice Opus 5.5's standard price. Scenario 3 on fast mode would cost 1 million x $8 = $8 plus 0.2 million x $40 = $8, so $16 a day instead of $8.
• Web search adds up in agents. Three searches per request at 1,000 requests a day is 3,000 searches x $0.01 = $30 a day, before the tokens of the results.
• Free credits. Anthropic's pricing FAQ says new users receive a small amount of free credits to test the API. It does not state the amount.

On other platforms: Claude Platform on AWS and Microsoft Foundry bill the same per-token rates through their marketplaces, in Claude Consumption Units at $0.01 each. Amazon Bedrock and Google Cloud set their own prices; for Claude 4.5 models and later, Anthropic's pricing page says their regional and multi-region endpoints cost 10% more than global ones. Claude on AWS Bedrock vs the Anthropic API compares the two.

Claude vs OpenAI at each price point

The OpenAI prices below come from OpenAI's pricing page on October 14, 2026: standard tier, prompts up to 272K input tokens. Models are paired by price, not by quality.

The list prices match at every level. The differences are elsewhere:

• Cache reads. Fable 5.1 reads from cache at $0.25 against GPT-6 Astra's $1.00, and Opus 5.5 at $0.20 against GPT-5.6 Sol's $0.40. OpenAI says GPT-5.6 Sol's price is promotional and available at least through November 21, 2026.
• Long prompts. OpenAI charges more above 272K input tokens: GPT-6.1 Sol goes to $4 and $15, GPT-6 Astra to $20 and $75, GPT-6 Luna to $0.20 and $0.75. Fable 5.1, Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5.5 keep the same price up to 1M tokens. Haiku 5.5 goes the other way: its higher rates start at 100K, so for a prompt between 100K and 272K tokens, GPT-6 Luna costs $0.10 and $0.50 while Haiku 5.5 costs $0.50 and $2.50.
• Data residency. OpenAI also adds 10% for regional processing endpoints on models released on or after March 5, 2026.
• Tokens are not the same unit. Each vendor has its own tokenizer, so the same text is a different number of tokens on each. Equal per-token prices do not mean equal cost per task. Count tokens on a sample of your own prompts on both sides.

Picking a tier

Price alone does not pick the model. Anthropic suggests starting with Opus 5.5 for most workloads and using Fable 5.1 when your evals on Opus 5.5 at higher effort still fall short, and it describes Haiku 5.5 as built for classification, extraction and routing. Before you pay for a bigger model, try a lower effort setting on the one you have: effort changes how many output tokens every response uses.

A practical test: run 200 to 500 representative inputs through two tiers, score the answers on your own criteria, then apply the prices above. Claude Haiku vs Sonnet: routing guide and the LLM model routing guide cover how to make that call per request instead of once for the whole app.

Where PromptUnit fits

PromptUnit makes that choice per request. Each request is checked: when a cheaper model is just as good for that request, PromptUnit uses it; otherwise the request goes to the model you asked for. If you connected keys for more than one provider, the cheaper model can be at another of those providers. Setup is two settings: point your app's AI API base URL at PromptUnit and add your PromptUnit key (the x-promptunit-key header). Your own Anthropic key stays. The dashboard shows every request: the model asked for, the model that answered, what it cost and what it saved. It is free until it has saved you money, then it takes 20% of what it saves.

The cheapest model per token is not always good enough. In one app the PromptUnit team runs itself (checks up to October 12, 2026, small samples, judged by Claude Sonnet 5, the model the app asked for, so not an independent judge), Claude Haiku 4.5 served the web-research step for five days with no errors and answers that passed the automatic format checks, yet it was judged worse than Sonnet 5 in 2 of 3 checks. PromptUnit stopped moving that step and kept it on Sonnet 5. Claude Haiku 5.5 was judged as good in only 4 of 8 checks on the same step. On the same app's video-prompt step, GPT-5.4 mini was judged as good in 23 of 23 checks at about 73% lower cost.

For a step-by-step plan to act on these numbers, see How to Reduce Claude API Costs: A Practical 5-Step Guide.

FAQ

How much does the Claude API cost?

As of October 14, 2026, Anthropic lists Claude Haiku 5.5 at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens (prompts up to 100,000 tokens), Sonnet 5.5 at $2 and $10, Opus 5.5 at $4 and $20, and Fable 5.1 at $10 and $50. The Batch API halves these prices.

What is the cheapest Claude model?

Claude Haiku 5.5: $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens for prompts up to 100,000 tokens. A request whose prompt is over 100,000 tokens pays $0.50 and $2.50 instead. Through the Batch API the lower rates are $0.05 and $0.25.

How much does prompt caching save on Claude?

A cache read costs 0.1x the base input price on most models, 0.05x on Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5.5, and 0.025x on Fable 5.1. Writing to the cache costs 1.25x the input price for a 5-minute cache and 2x for a 1-hour cache. On the current models the cached prefix must be at least 512 tokens.

Does Claude charge more for long prompts?

Not on Fable 5.1, Opus 5.5 or Sonnet 5.5: their 1M-token context window is billed at the standard rate. Haiku 5.5 is the exception: a request whose prompt is over 100,000 tokens pays 5 times the lower rates. The legacy Haiku 4.5 has a 200K-token context window.

Do newer Claude models use more tokens for the same text?

Yes. Anthropic says Claude 4.7 and later models use a newer tokenizer that produces about 30% more tokens for the same text, depending on the content. Sonnet 4.6, Haiku 4.5 and earlier models use the previous tokenizer, so compare costs per task, not only per token.

Is Claude Mythos the same model as Claude Fable?

No. Claude Mythos 5.1 and Mythos 5 are separate models with limited availability, open only to organizations verified through Anthropic's verification programs, such as the Cyber Verification Program. Their listed token prices match Fable 5.1 and Fable 5.

Does Claude's web search cost extra?

Yes. Web search costs $10 per 1,000 searches on the Claude API, plus standard token prices for the search results that enter the context. Web fetch has no extra charge: you pay only for the tokens of the fetched content.