Sonnet 5 API Pricing
Sonnet 5 has tracked API rates of $2.00 per 1M input tokens and $10.00 per 1M output tokens. Cached input is billed at $0.2 per 1M tokens. Rates are in USD from the AI IQ dataset; see the Sonnet 5 model profile for capability scores.
Price List
| Rate | Price (USD) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Input | $2.00 | per 1M tokens |
| Output | $10.00 | per 1M tokens |
| Cached input (read) | $0.2 | per 1M tokens |
| Cache write | $2.50 | per 1M tokens |
| Cache write (1-hour) | $4.00 | per 1M tokens |
| Blended input + output | $12.00 | 1M in + 1M out at list price |
| Context window | 1M tokens |
Pricing References and Billing Caveats
These are the tracked rates, not a live quote. Hosted-provider choice, region, long-context tiers, caching, batch discounts, and temporary promotions can change the actual bill. Open-weight availability does not mean hosted inference is free. Workload examples assume the listed standard input and output rates, with no cache hits or discounts.
Anthropic pricing catalog — check current offerings and rate tiers. This catalog may not list historical models or third-party hosted endpoints.
No model-specific official reference is recorded for this entry. Confirm the current rates directly with your inference provider.
What a Workload Costs
Computed straight from the list prices above — token counts are illustrative workload sizes, not measurements of Sonnet 5.
| Workload | Cost | Tokens |
|---|---|---|
| Short chat turn | $0.00700 | 1K in / 500 out |
| Summarize a long document | $0.220 | 100K in / 2K out |
| Agentic coding session | $2.00 | 500K in / 100K out |
| 1M input + 1M output tokens | $12.00 | 1M in / 1M out |
Effective Cost
In AI IQ's scoring, Sonnet 5's list price is adjusted by a token-usage multiplier of 3.209 (measured from real benchmark runs), giving an effective cost of $38.51 per 1M input + output tokens. That places it #139 of 153 models on the effective-cost ranking (lower is cheaper). Some models spend far more tokens than others on the same task, so effective cost compares what a unit of work really costs. Method details are on the methodology page; see all models on the cost charts and the falling cost of intelligence over time.
Cheaper Alternatives at Similar Capability
Models with a lower effective cost that score within a few IQ points of Sonnet 5 (IQ 125), or better.
| Model | Provider | IQ | Effective Cost / 1M |
|---|---|---|---|
| gpt-6.1-sol | OpenAI | 141 | $6.29 |
| opus-5.5 | Anthropic | 141 | $35.67 |
| gpt-6-astra | OpenAI | 140 | $34.14 |
| gpt-6-sol | OpenAI | 137 | $9.83 |
| gpt-5.6-sol | OpenAI | 134 | $27.43 |
| Gemini 3.8 Flash | 130 | $7.98 |