All comparisons · Prices checked 2026-10-01

Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Claude Opus 5.5: API cost comparison

For a typical chatbot reply, Claude Sonnet 5.5 costs $0.0091 and Claude Opus 5.5 costs $0.018 per request: Claude Sonnet 5.5 is 2.0× cheaper. Claude Sonnet 5.5 is cheaper in every workload below.

API prices

Claude Sonnet 5.5Claude Opus 5.5
MakerAnthropicAnthropic
Input / 1M tokens$2$4
Output / 1M tokens$10$20
Output vs input price5.0×5.0×
Context window1M tokens1M tokens
Tokens for the same English text~130% of GPT's count (estimate)~130% of GPT's count (estimate)

Cost by workload

Workload (per 1,000 requests)Claude Sonnet 5.5Claude Opus 5.5Cheaper
Chatbot reply
short question plus some chat history · 1,500 in / 400 out
$9.10$18.20Claude Sonnet 5.5 2.0× cheaper
Document Q&A (RAG)
retrieved passages plus a question · 8,000 in / 500 out
$27.30$54.60Claude Sonnet 5.5 2.0× cheaper
Coding agent step
large working context, short edit · 25,000 in / 800 out
$75.40$151Claude Sonnet 5.5 2.0× cheaper
Summarize a long report
long input, short summary · 20,000 in / 300 out
$55.90$112Claude Sonnet 5.5 2.0× cheaper
Write an article
short brief, long draft · 800 in / 2,000 out
$28.08$56.16Claude Sonnet 5.5 2.0× cheaper
Bar chart: Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Claude Opus 5.5 API cost per 1,000 requests for chatbot, RAG, coding agent, summary and article workloads
Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Claude Opus 5.5: cost per 1,000 requests by workload (USD).

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is cheaper on both input and output, so it costs less for every kind of request. The gap is 2.0× on input and 2.0× on output.

Monthly cost

Monthly volumeClaude Sonnet 5.5Claude Opus 5.5
10,000 chatbot replies / month$91.00$182
100,000 chatbot replies / month$910$1,820
1,000,000 chatbot replies / month$9,100$18,200

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Token counts are for English text measured with GPT's tokenizer; each model's own tokenizer difference is applied automatically.

Questions

Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5.5 or Claude Opus 5.5?

For a typical chatbot reply (1,500 input and 400 output tokens), Claude Sonnet 5.5 costs $0.0091 and Claude Opus 5.5 costs $0.018 per request, so Claude Sonnet 5.5 is 2.0× cheaper. Claude Sonnet 5.5 is cheaper in every workload below.

How much do Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Claude Opus 5.5 cost per million tokens?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 costs $2 per 1M input tokens and $10 per 1M output tokens. Claude Opus 5.5 costs $4 input and $20 output. Prices checked 2026-10-01.

Do both models count the same text as the same number of tokens?

No. Each model family has its own tokenizer, so the same text can be a different number of tokens. The costs on this page already include that difference (estimated from GPT's tokenizer).

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Standard API list prices, short-context tier, no caching or batch discounts. Prices change; check each provider's pricing page before large jobs.