Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29) vs Claude Sonnet 4.6
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29) vs Claude Sonnet 4.6: Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29) is cheaper by 0% on average. Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29) from Anthropic (200,000-token context, reasoning, tool calls) vs. Claude Sonnet 4.6 from Azure AI Foundry (1,000,000-token context, reasoning, tool calls). Use Agent Command Center to A/B both in shadow mode and pick the winner per workload.
Side-by-side cost
Live workload comparison
Same workload run through both models. The cheaper one is highlighted.
3,000
01,000,000
400
064,000
5,000
01,000,000
At this workload, Claude Sonnet 4.6 is 0% cheaper than Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29) — a savings of $0.000000/month ($0.000000/year).
Production recipe — Agent Command Center
strategy: cost-optimized
primary:
model: claude-sonnet-4-6
provider: azure-ai-foundry
fallback:
model: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929
provider: anthropic
shadow: { sample_rate: 0.05 } # mirror 5% of traffic to compare quality live| Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29) | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | |
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $3.00/M | $3.00/M |
| Output price | $15.00/M | $15.00/M |
| Context window | 200,000 | 1,000,000 |
| Max output | 64,000 | 64,000 |
| Function calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio input | — | — |
| Reasoning | ✓ | ✓ |
| Prompt caching | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structured output | ✓ | ✓ |
| Pricing verified | May 12, 2026 | May 12, 2026 |
Cheaper option
Benchmark comparison
Side-by-side public benchmark scores. Greener bar = winner.
Chatbot Arena ELOgeneral
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
1,454
Claude Sonnet 4.6
1,466
AIME 2025math
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
100.0%
Claude Sonnet 4.6
—
τ-bench (retail)agent
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
75.4%
Claude Sonnet 4.6
91.7%
GPQA Diamondreasoning
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
84.4%
Claude Sonnet 4.6
89.9%
MMLU-Proreasoning
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
87.4%
Claude Sonnet 4.6
—
SWE-bench Verifiedagent
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
82.0%
Claude Sonnet 4.6
79.6%
MMMU-Promultimodal
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
—
Claude Sonnet 4.6
74.5%
LiveCodeBenchcode
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
67.4%
Claude Sonnet 4.6
—
ARC-AGI-2reasoning
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
—
Claude Sonnet 4.6
58.3%
τ-bench (airline)agent
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
55.0%
Claude Sonnet 4.6
—
Humanity's Last Examreasoning
Claude Sonnet 4.5 (2025-09-29)
—
Claude Sonnet 4.6
33.2%