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Anthropic vs Anthropic

Claude 4.6 Sonnet vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet

Compare Claude 4.6 Sonnet and Claude 4.5 Sonnet across pricing, context window, capabilities, benchmarks, and API access to choose the better fit for long-context workloads versus reasoning-heavy tasks.

Overview ↓ Pricing ↓ Capabilities ↓ Benchmarks ↓ Community ↓ Verdict ↓ FAQ ↓ Related ↓

Overview Comparison

Structured side-by-side differences for the highest-signal model metadata.

Claude 4.6 Sonnet
Claude 4.5 Sonnet

Provider

The entity that currently provides this model.

Claude 4.6 Sonnet Anthropic
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Anthropic

Model ID

The routed model identifier exposed by upstream providers.

Claude 4.6 Sonnet anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6
Claude 4.5 Sonnet anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5

Input Context Window

The number of tokens supported by the input context window.

Claude 4.6 Sonnet 1M tokens
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 200,000 tokens

Maximum Output Tokens

The number of tokens that can be generated by the model in a single request.

Claude 4.6 Sonnet 128,000 tokens tokens
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 64,000 tokens tokens

Open Source

Whether the model's code is available for public use.

Claude 4.6 Sonnet No
Claude 4.5 Sonnet No

Release Date

When the model was first released.

Claude 4.6 Sonnet Feb 17, 2026
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Sep 29, 2025

Knowledge Cut-off Date

When the model's knowledge was last updated.

Claude 4.6 Sonnet February 2026
Claude 4.5 Sonnet September 2025

API Providers

The providers that currently expose the model through an API.

Claude 4.6 Sonnet
OpenRouter
Claude 4.5 Sonnet
OpenRouter

Modalities

Types of data each model can process or return.

Claude 4.6 Sonnet
Text Image File Code
Claude 4.5 Sonnet
Text Image File Code

Pricing Comparison

Compare current token pricing before you choose the cheaper or more scalable API option.

Claude 4.6 Sonnet Anthropic
Input price $3.00 Per 1M tokens
Output price $15.00 Per 1M tokens
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Anthropic
Input price $3.00 Per 1M tokens
Output price $15.00 Per 1M tokens

Capabilities Comparison

See where each model overlaps, where they differ, and which one supports more of the features you care about.

Capability
Claude 4.6 Sonnet
Claude 4.5 Sonnet
1M Token Context Accepts up to 1 million tokens in a single request (beta), enabling reasoning across entire codebases, lengthy contracts, or dozens of documents at once.
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet —
Advanced Coding Supports the full software development lifecycle including planning, implementation, debugging, and large-scale refactors across multiple files.
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet —
Advanced Reasoning Applies multi-step reasoning to problems in domains including finance, law, medicine, and STEM, with improved knowledge depth compared to earlier Claude generations.
Claude 4.6 Sonnet —
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
Agentic Task Execution Designed to sustain coherent, autonomous work on complex multi-step tasks — including file editing, command execution, and test running — across extended sessions.
Claude 4.6 Sonnet —
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
Agentic Workflows Handles long-running, multi-step autonomous tasks with improved instruction following, tool selection, and error correction over extended sessions.
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet —
Code Generation Generates, edits, and debugs code across complex software engineering tasks, ranking at the top of the SWE-bench Verified leaderboard for real-world coding ability.
Claude 4.6 Sonnet —
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
Computer Use Controls browsers and desktop software to navigate complex spreadsheets, fill multi-step web forms, and automate workflows that previously required human intervention.
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
File
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
Image
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
Large Context Window Processes up to 200,000 tokens in a single request, enabling analysis of long documents, large codebases, or extended conversation histories without truncation.
Claude 4.6 Sonnet —
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
MCP Integration Compatible with Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, enabling connection to external data sources and services through a standardized interface.
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
Reasoning Applies multi-step reasoning to complex professional tasks including financial analysis, research synthesis, and frontend code generation.
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
Safety Guardrails Includes Anthropic's safety evaluations with documented resistance to prompt injection attacks, rated as safe as or safer than other recent Claude models.
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet —
Structured Output
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
Text
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
Tool Use Supports structured tool calling, allowing the model to invoke external functions and APIs as part of a reasoning or task-completion workflow.
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported
Tools
Claude 4.6 Sonnet Supported
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Supported

Benchmark Comparison

Shared benchmark rows make it easier to compare performance where both models have published scores.

Benchmark Claude 4.6 Sonnet Claude 4.5 Sonnet
ARC-AGI-2
Novel abstract reasoning and pattern recognition
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 58.3%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet N/A
Finance Agent
Financial analysis and decision-making tasks
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 63.3%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet N/A
GPQA Diamond
PhD-level science questions (biology, physics, chemistry)
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 79.9%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 72.7%
HLE
Questions that challenge frontier models across many domains
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 13.2%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 7.1%
IFBench
Instruction following accuracy
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 41.2%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet N/A
LiveCodeBench
Real-world coding tasks from recent competitions
Claude 4.6 Sonnet N/A
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 59.0%
Long Context Reasoning
Reasoning across long documents and contexts
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 57.7%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet N/A
MATH-500
Undergraduate and competition-level math problems
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 97.8%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet N/A
MCP-Atlas Tool Use
Structured tool use via Model Context Protocol
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 61.3%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet N/A
MMLU-Pro
Expert knowledge across 14 academic disciplines
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 79.1%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 86.0%
MMMB
Multilingual and multimodal understanding
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 76.1%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet N/A
OSWorld
Autonomous computer use and desktop tasks
Claude 4.6 Sonnet N/A
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 61.4%
OSWorld-Verified
Autonomous computer use and desktop tasks
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 72.5%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet N/A
SciCode
Scientific research coding and numerical methods
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 46.9%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 42.8%
SWE-bench Verified
Real GitHub issues requiring multi-file code fixes
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 79.6%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 77.2%
Terminal-Bench
Agentic coding and terminal command tasks
Claude 4.6 Sonnet N/A
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 50.0%
Terminal-Bench 2.0
Agentic coding and terminal command tasks
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 59.1%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet N/A
TerminalBench Hard
Agentic coding and terminal command tasks
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 46.2%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet N/A
τ²-Bench
Agentic tool use in realistic scenarios
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 79.5%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet N/A
τ²-bench Retail
Agentic tool use in retail scenarios
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 91.7%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 86.2%
τ²-bench Telecom
Agentic tool use in telecom scenarios
Claude 4.6 Sonnet 97.9%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet 98.0%
Community discussion

What Reddit discussions say about Claude 4.6 Sonnet vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet

Claude 4.6 Sonnet and Claude 4.5 Sonnet are both surfacing live Reddit discussions, giving this comparison a community layer beyond specs and benchmarks.

The most visible threads right now are clustered in r/singularity, r/ClaudeAI, r/LocalLLaMA.

Claude 4.5 Sonnet r/singularity 1,356 upvotes 188 comments September 29, 2025
Claude 4.5 Sonnet is here

[https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-4-5](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-4-5)

Open Reddit thread
Claude 4.5 Sonnet r/singularity 367 upvotes 56 comments December 22, 2025
Zhipu AI releases GLM-4.7: Beating GPT-5.2 and Claude 4.5 Sonnet in Coding & Reasoning Benchmarks

Zhipu AI (Z.ai) officially released **GLM-4.7** today, December 22, 2025. The new flagship shows major gains in coding and complex reasoning, specifically targeting Western SOTA models.

**LMArena Code Arena (Blind Test):** #1 among open-source models, outperforming **GPT-5.2**.

**LiveCodeBench V6:** Scored **84.8**, surpassing **Claude 4.5 Sonnet**.

**AIME 2025 (Math):** Outperformed both **Claude 4.5 Sonnet** and **GPT-5.1**.

**Human Last Exam (HLE):** Scored **42%** (38% improvement over GLM-4.6), approaching GPT-5.1 performance.

**τ²-Bench:** Reached parity with Claude 4.5 Sonnet in real-world interaction.

**Technical Specs & Features:**

**Context Window & Speed:** 200K tokens (128K max output) and 55+ tokens per second.

**Thinking Mode:** Includes a dedicated "Deep Thinking" mode for multi-step reasoning.

**Agentic Coding:** Optimized for end-to-end task execution in tools like Claude Code, Cline and Roo Code.

**Pricing:** Launching a $3/month plan for direct integration into coding agents.

**Source: Z.ai Official (GLM 4.7 Docs)**

Open Reddit thread
Claude 4.5 Sonnet r/medicine 247 upvotes 30 comments December 19, 2025
LLMs (GPT-5, Gemini 2.5 Pro, Claude 4.5 Sonnet) are highly vulnerable to prompt injection, permitting the LLMs to output contraindicated medical advice

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2842987

Prompt injection is essentially a way for malicious people to hijack the LLM's usual behavior. That may include fabricated evidence put into the model or the external context (eg a completely white-out text not seen by humans). The authors were able to get all the latest LLMs to recommend thalidomide in a hypothetical encounter with a pregnant woman, 80 to 100 percent of the time. That's a major reason I won't let an agentic AI touch private information or use an AI browser.

Open Reddit thread
Claude 4.5 Sonnet r/ClaudeAI 196 upvotes 137 comments October 3, 2025
Claude 4.5 Sonnet: lots of hype, middling ranks. What gives?

The leaderboard scores in the screenshot don’t match the hype cycle. On WebDev, Sonnet 4.5 sits around the second tier (score \~**1382**, grouped with “rank 4”), behind GPT-5 (high) (**1478**) and even Anthropic’s own Opus 4.1 variants (**1469**, **1461**). On the Text board it’s clustered in a big tie zone (\~**1440**) rather than leading.

Open Reddit thread
View more discussions →

Which model should you choose?

Use the summary below to decide which model better fits your workflow, budget, and feature requirements.

Best fit for

Claude 4.6 Sonnet

Claude 4.6 Sonnet is a stronger fit for long-context workloads, reasoning-heavy tasks, tool-augmented workflows.

Best fit for

Claude 4.5 Sonnet

Claude 4.5 Sonnet is a stronger fit for reasoning-heavy tasks, tool-augmented workflows, multimodal applications.

Verdict

Choose Claude 4.6 Sonnet if you prioritize long-context workloads, reasoning-heavy tasks, tool-augmented workflows. Choose Claude 4.5 Sonnet if your workflow depends more on reasoning-heavy tasks, tool-augmented workflows, multimodal applications.

FAQ

Common questions about Claude 4.6 Sonnet vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet

What is the main difference between Claude 4.6 Sonnet and Claude 4.5 Sonnet?

Claude 4.6 Sonnet leans toward long-context workloads, reasoning-heavy tasks, tool-augmented workflows, while Claude 4.5 Sonnet is better suited to reasoning-heavy tasks, tool-augmented workflows, multimodal applications.

Which model is cheaper: Claude 4.6 Sonnet or Claude 4.5 Sonnet?

Claude 4.6 Sonnet and Claude 4.5 Sonnet currently share the same published input price of $3.0000 per 1M input tokens.

Which model has the larger context window: Claude 4.6 Sonnet or Claude 4.5 Sonnet?

Claude 4.6 Sonnet is listed with a context window of 1M, while Claude 4.5 Sonnet is listed with 200,000.

How should I evaluate Claude 4.6 Sonnet vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet for my use case?

This comparison currently includes 21 shared benchmark rows, helping you compare practical performance across overlapping evaluations.