It's priced based on the cost to provide it, not the value it provides to the consumer. Answer from durable-racoon on reddit.com
ClaudeLog
claudelog.com › home › faqs › sonnet vs opus
Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Opus for Claude Code - Performance Comparison | ClaudeLog
Cost Optimization - Claude Opus 4.5 costs approximately 67% less than Opus 4.1 ($5/$25 vs $15/$75), but still more than Sonnet 4.5.
Vertu
vertu.com › best post › claude opus 4.5 vs sonnet 4.5 vs opus 4.1: the evolution of anthropic’s ai models
Claude Opus 4.5 vs Sonnet 4.5: Pricing Revolution & Performance Comparison | Anthropic
November 25, 2025 - Opus 4.5 achieved 80.9% on SWE-bench Verified, outperforming Sonnet 4.5's 77.2% and Opus 4.1's 74.5%. This benchmark measures the ability to solve real-world software engineering problems—the exact tasks professional developers face daily.
Videos
18:57
I Tested Claude Code: $20 vs. $200 Subscription - YouTube
15:53
Claude Opus 4.5: Speed, Cost & Quality After 70.1 Million Tokens ...
00:23
Claude 4 Opus & Sonnet Pricing #shorts - YouTube
24:14
Claude 4.5 Sonnet Is Here! Better Than Opus? - YouTube
08:10
Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Opus 4.1 Coding Test | Which is the Best Coding ...
GPT-5 vs Claude Opus 4.1: An Early Comparison for Web Dev Coding ...
Eden AI
edenai.co › post › claude-sonnet-4-vs-claude-opus-4
Claude Sonnet 4 vs Claude Opus 4
Claude Sonnet 4 is significantly more cost-effective than Claude Opus 4 with a difference of 80%. Both input and output tokens are 5 times cheaper with Sonnet 4 ($3 input, $15 output) versus Opus 4 ($15 input, $75 output).
Reddit
reddit.com › r/claudeai › why is opus priced so high and considered the flagship when practically speaking sonnet 3.5 seems to perform better?
r/ClaudeAI on Reddit: Why is Opus priced so high and considered the flagship when practically speaking Sonnet 3.5 seems to perform better?
January 13, 2025 -
Huge disparity in pricing and speed, and I have yet to see it give a better code answer than Sonnet.
What am I missing?
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It's priced based on the cost to provide it, not the value it provides to the consumer.
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You are aware that coding is not the one and only use case for AI, right? BTW Opus is not considered the "flagship" anymore, it's just the biggest and most costly model. Still incredibly capable for creative or analytic complex tasks, writing of papers, documents and narratives, and anything that has to do with linguistic. Can create links between things that Sonnet often cannot. Also a very pleasant interlocutor and excellent for arguments, philosophy and law. To me the price is justified in some cases, still great value, even more if you use a subscription. If you need intermediate coding any open source model with reasonable parameters can do it, if you need advanced coding Sonnet 3.5 and o1 are the best. But if you think Opus is costly just look at o1 API pricing...
Reddit
reddit.com › r/claudeai › are you seeing big difference between sonnet vs. opus?
r/ClaudeAI on Reddit: Are you seeing big difference between Sonnet vs. Opus?
June 22, 2025 -
I’m on the $100/month plan. 1-2 prompts in I got my limit on Opus, then I spend most of my coding day on Sonnet.
Whenever I am on Opus, it isn’t obvious it’s writing code that Sonnet can’t. I see a bigger difference between prompts that do vs. do not have “ultrathink” rather than Sonnet/Opus.
Does anyone with more experience have a clear perspective on Sonnet vs Opus? Even on the benchmarks they are about the same.
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Opus follows instructions better than sonnet for big tasks, but it can sometimes overthink or overengineer something. Sonnet tends to be more direct but can sometimes not follow instructions as good as opus. I'd say opus is great at planning and executing big tasks, while sonnet is best for simpler tasks that dont need the intelligence of opus.or at least plan with opus, code with sonnet, is another way.
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Opus is absolutely worth it for me and a large codebase at least. It's not just the line of code being different, it's the entire logic process. Basically, it's much more efficient which saves me time.
Anthropic
anthropic.com › news › claude-opus-4-5
Introducing Claude Opus 4.5
A clear step forward from Sonnet 4.5. Claude Opus 4.5 handles long-horizon coding tasks more efficiently than any model we’ve tested. It achieves higher pass rates on held-out tests while using up to 65% fewer tokens, giving developers real cost control without sacrificing quality.
Data Studios
datastudios.org › post › claude-opus-4-5-vs-claude-sonnet-4-5-full-report-and-comparison-of-features-performance-pricing-a
Claude Opus 4.5 vs Claude Sonnet 4.5: Full Report and Comparison of Features, Performance, Pricing and more
1 month ago - For many developers and teams, Sonnet hits the sweet spot of cost and benefit, delivering near-Opus coding performance at a fraction of the expense and with a far better interaction speed.
Laozhang
blog.laozhang.ai › ai-models › claude-opus-4-vs-sonnet-4-complete-comparison-guide
Claude Opus 4 vs Sonnet 4: Complete 2025 Comparison Guide – Performance, Pricing & Best Use Cases – LaoZhang-AI
Many teams use Sonnet 4 for routine tasks and Opus 4 for complex challenges. LaoZhang.ai’s unified API makes it easy to switch between models. Claude Sonnet 4 is ideal for beginners – it’s available on the free tier, faster, and handles most tasks excellently while being more cost-effective for learning.
Spartner
spartner.software › blog › claude-sonnet-vs-opus-which-one-do-you-choose
Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs. Opus: the fastest sprinter or the deepest thinker? | Spartner
June 27, 2024 - For us as developers, this is a big deal. Internal tests from Anthropic show that 3.5 Sonnet solves 64% of programming problems, compared to 38% for Opus. In practice, we notice this immediately: cleaner code...
Skywork
skywork.ai › home › claude sonnet 4.5 vs claude opus: which one should you choose?
Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Claude Opus: which one should you choose? - Skywork ai
October 3, 2025 - Short version: if you need best-in-class coding, long-running agents, or reliable browser/computer use, pick Sonnet. If you’re tied to an older workflow where Opus is already integrated and cost isn’t a concern, Opus could still work — ...
Latenode
latenode.com › home › blog about no-code integrations with latenode - the ultimate no-code automation platform › undefined › ai model comparisons (gpt vs claude vs gemini) in platform comparisons & alternatives - explore no-code automation with latenode › claude 3.7 sonnet vs. claude 3.5 opus: major leaps in coding and reasoning
Claude 3.7 Sonnet vs. Claude 3.5 Opus: Major Leaps in Coding and ...
Both versions connect via Latenode's ... tasks [3]. Pricing is another game-changer: Claude 3.7 Sonnet costs just $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens [1], making it far more affordable than Claude 3.5 ...
Reddit
reddit.com › r/claudeai › how big of a difference is there between opus and sonnet for coding?
r/ClaudeAI on Reddit: How big of a difference is there between Opus and Sonnet for coding?
July 27, 2025 -
I’m seeing a lot of discussion about using Opus to plan and sonnet to code.
What is the main difference between the two on coding tasks?
Adaline
labs.adaline.ai › p › claude-4
Claude 4 Models for Product Teams: Sonnet vs Opus Comparison Guide
August 22, 2025 - This leads to either overspending or underwhelming results. Choose Sonnet 4 for daily development at $3/$15 per million tokens, and Opus 4.1 for complex reasoning at $15/$75 when accuracy justifies 5x cost.
Medium
medium.com › @ferreradaniel › claude-4-opus-vs-sonnet-the-future-of-ai-coding-tools-in-2025-which-model-wins-c1baa9f445f7
Claude 4 Opus vs Sonnet: The Future of AI Coding Tools in 2025 — Which Model Wins? | by Daniel Ferrera | Medium
May 23, 2025 - Simple: not everyone needs a Ferrari for a grocery run. Opus is for power users and big projects, while Sonnet balances speed, cost, and performance for everyday coding and AI tasks. For most people, Sonnet will get things done for you.
Socialgains
socialgains.co.uk › claude-4-opus-vs-sonnet-complete-2025-comparison-guide
Claude 4 Opus vs Sonnet: Complete 2025 Comparison Guide
May 25, 2025 - Claude 4 Opus vs Sonnet comparison: performance benchmarks, pricing ($15/$75 vs $3/$15), features, and use cases. Choose the right AI model for coding, business tasks, and development projects in 2025
Reddit
reddit.com › r/claudeai › opus 4 vs sonnet 4
r/ClaudeAI on Reddit: Opus 4 vs Sonnet 4
May 26, 2025 -
I work in quantitative finance, so most of my programming revolves around building financial tools that detect and exploit market anomalies. The coding I do is highly theoretical and often based on insights from academic finance research.
I’m currently exploring different models to help me reason through and validate my approaches. Does anyone have experience using Opus 4 of Sonnet 4 for this kind of work? I’m trying to figure out what is the best fit for my use case.
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I love reading these. All of you guys have AI with super important and hard stuff, and I'm over here using it to play like, Dungeons and Dragons.
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I created an MCP to connect with my stock broker and gave Claude access to historical data and other tools required to trade on my behalf. I didn't ask it to execute any specific strategies yet but I realized it's not good at trading just using tools. I lost few bucks using this so far.
Reddit
reddit.com › r/singularity › claude opus 4.5 is much cheaper than opus 4.1
r/singularity on Reddit: Claude Opus 4.5 is MUCH CHEAPER than Opus 4.1
November 24, 2025 - GPT-4.5 is actually 2X-20X CHEAPER than Sonnet-3.7-thinking in many use cases. ... Gemini 3 Pro Preview was temporarily available within Cursor, and I managed to test a Creative Writing prompt.
Live Chat AI
livechatai.com › claude-opus-4-pricing-calculator
Claude Opus 4 Pricing Calculator - Compare Sonnet 4 & Opus 4 Costs
Cheapest possible classification For quick, low-cost tasks like routing or sentiment analysis, go with OpenAI o3 or Claude Haiku. Audio support Opus 4 only supports text and images. For voice, use GPT-4o. Ultra-low latency If speed under 1 second matters (e.g., in live chat), Sonnet 4 or o3-mini are better options.
Reddit
reddit.com › r/claudeai › opus vs sonnet 3.5
r/ClaudeAI on Reddit: Opus vs Sonnet 3.5
July 8, 2024 -
I had a subscription last with claude opus last May and did not renew after. That was before Sonnet 3.5 was released, right now I am using it on coding and surprisingly it was better than opus when I used opus last May. Question, is it really better than opus in coding or opus also got upgraded same as sonnet? I am in dillema if I am going to subscribe again or not.
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Sonnet 3.5 is better than Opus 3.0, this will change later this year when Opus 3.5 comes out.
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I recommend using the Cursor IDE and paying $20 for the subscription. It allows you to select ANY LLM with an API, including Claude 3.5 Sonnet, so when the next best one comes out, you can switch without switching subscriptions. Also, Cursor has been fantastic with how it integrates the LLM into the coding process.