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Claude Sonnet 4.6

Anthropic · Claude 4

Anthropic's balanced Claude model — strong reasoning and coding at moderate pricing, the default recommendation for most tasks.

Part of Claude Sonnet family · Other versions: Claude Sonnet 4.5
Type
multimodal
Context
200K tokens
Max Output
128K tokens
Status
current
Input
$3/1M tok
Output
$15/1M tok
API Access
Yes
License
proprietary
reasoning coding balanced vision tool-use
Released February 2026 · Updated April 18, 2026

Overview

Freshness note: Model capabilities, limits, and pricing can change quickly. This profile is a point-in-time snapshot last verified on April 18, 2026.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 launched on February 17, 2026 and remains Anthropic’s current Sonnet-tier model. Anthropic’s April release wave changed the premium top end by introducing Opus 4.7, but it did not replace Sonnet 4.6 as the balanced everyday Claude tier for coding, long-context reasoning, computer use, agent planning, and professional knowledge work.

The practical reason this page matters is that Sonnet 4.6 is not just a routine patch. Anthropic explicitly markets it as a full upgrade across coding, design, long-context reasoning, and computer use, while keeping the same entry pricing as Sonnet 4.5. That combination still makes it the obvious first stop for most Claude-based builds.

Capabilities

Anthropic’s current launch and product pages emphasize a wide capability spread:

  • Strong coding and repo-scale implementation work, with Anthropic explicitly calling out improved consistency and instruction following.
  • Better computer use behavior for browser and desktop-style workflows where the model needs to navigate software without custom APIs.
  • Long-context reasoning for document-heavy or codebase-heavy work.
  • Agent planning and tool-enabled workflows for production assistants and automations.
  • Solid multimodal understanding for images and documents alongside text reasoning.

In practical routing terms, Sonnet is still the balanced Claude tier. Opus remains the higher-ceiling escalation path, but Sonnet 4.6 now covers more of the work that used to justify jumping to Opus sooner.

Technical Details

Anthropic’s current published specs and docs support these reference points:

  • 200K standard context window.
  • 1M-token context window in beta on the API, available for qualifying organizations and requests that opt into the beta flow.
  • 128K max output tokens in this repo snapshot.
  • Text and image input with text output, plus tool-use support.

The 1M-token beta matters operationally because it gives Sonnet a credible long-context lane for larger codebases and document sets, but teams should still treat it as a beta feature with pricing and lifecycle caveats rather than a silent default.

Pricing & Access

Anthropic states that pricing remains the same as Sonnet 4.5:

  • Input: $3
  • Output: $15

Anthropic also documents prompt-caching discounts, batch-processing discounts, and premium pricing for very large 1M-context requests above the normal threshold. For everyday production routing, the important point is that base Sonnet pricing did not increase with the 4.6 launch.

Access options:

  • Claude.ai on web, iOS, and Android
  • Anthropic API (direct)
  • AWS Bedrock
  • Google Vertex AI
  • Microsoft Foundry
  • Claude consumer and workspace products, including Claude Code-connected workflows and broader Claude desktop surfaces where plan access allows

Best Use Cases

Sonnet 4.6 is the right default for:

  • Day-to-day coding assistance, review, refactoring, and implementation planning.
  • Agent workflows that need strong tool use without premium-tier pricing.
  • Long-document or large-context business analysis.
  • Computer-use tasks where browser or application navigation is part of the workflow.
  • General assistant deployments where one model has to cover writing, analysis, and structured output reliably.

Move up to Opus when you need the highest ceiling on difficult reasoning, or down to Haiku when throughput and cost dominate the decision.

Comparisons

  • GPT-5.4 (OpenAI): Stronger single-model option when a team wants one OpenAI route across coding, reasoning, and agentic tasks, but Sonnet remains a compelling Claude-native default.
  • Gemini 2.5 Pro (Google): Strong long-context and multimodal alternative, especially in Google-native stacks, while Sonnet often wins on Anthropic ecosystem fit and coding-centric workflow familiarity.
  • Claude Opus 4.7 (Anthropic): Higher-ceiling premium escalation path for the hardest work, while Sonnet 4.6 still covers a larger share of real production use without Opus-level cost.