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Anthropic introduced Claude Sonnet 5.5 on Monday, September 28, 2026. The most highlighted part of the launch includes the specifications and the price of the newly launched AI model, which are almost similar to those of the one launched a week ago. Notably, Claude Opus 5.5 was released on September 22, 2026.
Sonnet 5.5 costs USD 2 per million input tokens and USD 10 per million output tokens, which are almost half of Claude Opus 5.5, which costs USD 4 per million input token and USD 20 per million output tokens. However, Sonnet 5.5 is more than 30% faster than the earlier Sonnet 5.
The price gap is not the only change. Claude Sonnet 5.5 comes close to Opus 5.5 on several important tests. It scored 70.6% on Terminal-Bench 4.0, compared with 66.4% for Opus 5.5. On an independent intelligence index, the latest Sonnet model scored 56 against 38 of its predecessors. Anthropic still says Opus is better suited to tasks that need deeper work and longer reasoning.
Sonnet 5.5 is currently available on Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, under the name claude-sonnet-5-5. The model offers Zero data retention, and Claude Haiku 5.5 is also promised to come in the coming weeks.
Also Read: Claude AI Outage Hits Users, 1,600+ Downdetector Reports
The lower price could matter most when companies use AI for many tasks. Developers can use Sonnet 5.5 for coding, fixing bugs and reviewing code. It can also help create documents, slides and spreadsheets. For businesses, these small savings can become significant when thousands of AI requests are made every day. Faster responses and lower token use can also help keep costs under control.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 does not make Opus 5.5 unnecessary. The two models serve different levels of work. Sonnet can handle many regular jobs at a lower cost, while Opus remains useful for harder tasks. For users, the main change is clear: they now have a cheaper model that can handle a wide range of daily AI work without always reaching for the more expensive option.
