Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Sonnet 5 pricing
Side-by-side LLM API pricing.Claude Sonnet 5 is cheaper on input ($2.00 vs $5.00 /1M), and Claude Sonnet 5 is cheaper on output ($10.00 vs $25.00 /1M). On a blended average, Claude Sonnet 5 is lower — but which wins for you depends on your input/output mix, so check the example workloads below or run the calculator.
| Attribute | Claude Opus 5 | Claude Sonnet 5 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Tier | Flagship | Mid-range |
| Status | GA | GA |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Input /1M | $5.00 | $2.00 |
| Output /1M | $25.00 | $10.00 |
| Cached input /1M | $0.50 | $0.20 |
| Batch input /1M | $2.50 | $1.00 |
| Batch output /1M | $12.50 | $5.00 |
| Blended (avg in+out) | $15.00 | $6.00 |
| 1M in + 1M out | $30.00 | $12.00 |
| 1M in (90% cached) + 100K out | $3.45 | $1.38 |
List prices, USD, directional. Rates are provider list prices per 1M tokens and are meant for comparison, not billing. Batch rates shown as 50% off are derived where a provider offers batch but does not publish a separate figure. Preview, promo, intro, peak/off-peak, long-context, and third-party-host prices are labeled where they apply. Token counts vary by tokenizer, so per-token price is not always a like-for-like cost. Always confirm with the provider before relying on a number. Prices as of 2026-08-03.
Tokenizer caveat: Claude Opus 5 uses a tokenizer that produces more tokens per unit of text, so identical content is billed as a different number of tokens on each model. Per-token price is therefore not a like-for-like cost — compare cost per task, not just the sticker rate.
Which should you pick?
For a balanced job (1M input + 1M output), Claude Sonnet 5 costs $12.00 versus $30.00. If your prompts are large and reused, prompt caching changes the maths — the cache-heavy row above shows a 90%-cached input scenario. If your work can run asynchronously, both providers' batch rates cut the bill further where offered.
Full price matrices: Claude Opus 5 pricing → · Claude Sonnet 5 pricing → · Back to the LLM pricing hub →