Anthropic made Sonnet 5 broadly available at $2/$10 per million tokens until August 31. I ran the routing math; it should be your default, not your ceiling.
Anthropic shipped Claude Sonnet 5, and the takes I saw were predictable:
"It replaces Opus."
"It is just another Sonnet refresh."
"The benchmark chart means you can route everything to it now."
Two of those are wrong. One is directionally right, but only if you care about cost per task instead of model prestige.
Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 5 Closes In on Opus 4.8 at a Fraction of the Price - Decrypt
Claude Sonnet 5 launches with competitive pricing and improved coding score
Claude Sonnet 5 continues Anthropic's pattern of hiding price increases behind unchanged token rates
Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 vs Sonnet 4.6 vs Opus 4.8: Agentic Coding Benchmarks, API Pricing, and Cost-Performance Tradeoffs Compared
Anthropic launches Claude Sonnet 5, a cheaper agent model
Anthropic's new Claude Sonnet 5 closes the gap to the pricier Opus model series
Claude Sonnet 5: Anthropic stringe il divario con Opus sui costi - Agenda Digitale
Anthropic rolls out Sonnet 5 with near-Opus 4.8 performance at a lower price
Claude Sonnet 5: prestazioni vicine a Opus 4.8 ma a prezzo inferiore
Anthropic releases Claude Sonnet 5 with improved agentic capabilities
Anthropic's new mid-tier model Claude Sonnet 5 arrives as Fable and Mythos sit boxed up under a U.S. export order.
Claude Sonnet 5 launches with $2 per million input tokens pricing and improved coding performance, narrowing the gap with…
Claude Sonnet 5 ranks fifth in the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index with 53 points and even beats the pricier Opus 4.8 on…
Claude Sonnet 5 brings agentic coding near Opus 4.8 at lower Sonnet pricing, with benchmarks and API details.
Claude Sonnet 5 brings near-Opus 4.8 agentic performance at a mid-tier price, from $2/$10 per million tokens until August 31.…
Anthropic has slashed Opus 4.8 model fast mode costs by 3x, offering up to 2.5x speeds at $10 input and $50 output per million…
