Claude 4.6 Sonnet vs Claude 3 Sonnet

1. Most capable Sonnet model yet

• Anthropic describes Sonnet 4.6 as its most capable Sonnet model.
• It is a full upgrade across coding, computer use, long-context reasoning, agent planning, knowledge work, and design.

2. Stronger coding and professional task performance at Sonnet pricing

• Pricing remains at $3/M input and $15/M output, matching Sonnet 4.5.
• Anthropic says early-access developers strongly preferred it to Sonnet 4.5, and often even to Opus 4.5 for practical work.

3. Long-context, agent-friendly reasoning

• Supports up to a 1M token context window in beta.
• Anthropic reports better consistency, fewer false claims of success, fewer hallucinations, and more reliable follow-through on multi-step tasks.

4. Modern API controls for adaptive work

• Supports adaptive thinking and the effort parameter for balancing speed, cost, and depth.
• Gains dynamic filtering for web search and web fetch, helping agent workflows keep only relevant information in context.

1. Speed + Intelligence Blend

• 2x faster than Claude 2/2.1
• Strong reasoning with lower cost

2. Enterprise-Ready

• Designed for high-volume, large-scale deployments
• Excellent stability for production workloads

3. Versatile Task Performance

• Great for RAG, search, document understanding
• High-quality code generation
• Effective at sales automation and knowledge retrieval

4. Vision Capabilities

• Reads charts, graphs, images reliably
• Extracts text from visuals efficiently