Claude Sonnet 4.6
The balanced Claude — near-Opus quality at a fraction of the cost.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 specifications
| Provider | Anthropic |
|---|---|
| Context window | 1,000,000 tokens (1.0M) |
| Input price | $3.00 / 1M tokens |
| Output price | $15.00 / 1M tokens |
| Inputs | Text, Images |
| Reasoning mode | Yes |
| Vision (image input) | Yes |
| Tool / function calling | Yes |
| Native real-time web | No |
| Open-weight | No |
Pricing & context web-verified June 2026 — confirm on Anthropic's pricing page. Supports a 1M-token context window.
What Claude Sonnet 4.6 is best for
- Everyday production workloads
- Coding assistants
- Balanced cost and quality at scale
How to prompt Claude Sonnet 4.6
- The same XML-tag and explicit-constraint habits as Opus work here.
- Default to Sonnet for most tasks; reserve Opus for the hardest reasoning.
- Use prompt caching to cut cost on repeated context.
Work with Claude Sonnet 4.6
- Build an optimized prompt with the Anthropic prompt generator.
- Estimate cost with the token counter & cost calculator, or compare every model on the AI model comparison page.
- Related reading: Best Claude Prompts 2026.
- Official: claude.ai
Frequently asked questions
What is Claude Sonnet 4.6's context window?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 has a 1,000,000-token context window (about 1.0M tokens) — the maximum amount of text it can consider at once.
How much does Claude Sonnet 4.6 cost?
Via the Anthropic API, Claude Sonnet 4.6 costs $3.00 per 1M input tokens and $15.00 per 1M output tokens (web-verified June 2026). Output tokens cost more, so the length of the model's reply usually drives the bill.
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 multimodal?
Yes — Claude Sonnet 4.6 accepts Text, Images as input, not just text.
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 open-weight?
No — Claude Sonnet 4.6 is available only through the Anthropic API, not as downloadable weights.