Claude 5 Sonnet vs Claude 4 Sonnet
Compare pricing, context windows, and strengths for Claude 5 Sonnet by Anthropic and Claude 4 Sonnet by Anthropic - and see how to put either to work in Appaca.
Claude 5 Sonnet
Anthropic's most agentic Sonnet yet, closing much of the gap to Opus 4.8 on reasoning, coding, and tool use while staying at Sonnet's speed and price.
View Claude 5 SonnetClaude 4 Sonnet
A balanced-hybrid reasoning model tuned for everyday assistant and high-volume tasks.
View Claude 4 SonnetClaude 5 Sonnet vs Claude 4 Sonnet at a glance
Specs and pricing side by side, from the Appaca AI models directory.
| Spec | Claude 5 Sonnet | Claude 4 Sonnet |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Model type | Text | Text |
| Context window | 1M tokens | 1M tokens |
| Input price | $3 / 1M tokens | $3 / 1M tokens |
| Output price | $15 / 1M tokens | $15 / 1M tokens |
| Status | Current | Superseded by Claude 4.5 Sonnet |
How Claude 5 Sonnet and Claude 4 Sonnet differ
What the numbers mean in practice when choosing between Claude 5 Sonnet and Claude 4 Sonnet.
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Both models cost the same on input: $3 per million tokens.
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Both models offer the same 1M tokens context window.
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Claude 4 Sonnet has been superseded by Claude 4.5 Sonnet - for new builds, consider the newer model first.
Strengths side by side
Where each model shines, according to benchmarks and provider positioning.
Claude 5 Sonnet
1. Anthropic's most agentic Sonnet yet
- A substantial upgrade over Sonnet 4.6 on reasoning, tool use, coding, and knowledge work - narrows the gap to Opus 4.8 while staying at Sonnet pricing.
- Early partners describe it finishing multi-step jobs end to end where prior Sonnet models used to stall halfway.
2. Clear benchmark gains over Sonnet 4.6
- 63.2% on SWE-bench Pro (vs 58.1%), 80.4% on Terminal-Bench 2.1 (vs 67.0%), 81.2% on OSWorld-Verified (vs 78.5%), and 57.4% on Humanity's Last Exam with tools (vs 46.8%).
- On the GDPval-AA v2 knowledge-work benchmark it edges past Opus 4.8 (1,618 vs 1,615).
3. Near-Opus performance at a fraction of the price
- Priced at $3/M input and $15/M output - 40% cheaper than Opus 4.8's $5/$25 - with introductory pricing of $2/$10 through Aug 31, 2026 during the rollout.
- Supports
low,medium,high, andxhigheffort levels, covering a wider cost-performance range than Sonnet 4.6 and matching Opus 4.8 on some tasks at higher effort.
4. Long-context, long-horizon reliability
- Full 1M token context window with up to 128K output tokens.
- Adaptive thinking automatically decides how long to reason; better self-correction, fewer tool errors, and steadier follow-through across long agent sessions in Claude Code and Cowork.
5. Safer and more honest than its predecessor
- Lower rates of hallucination, sycophancy, and misaligned behavior than Sonnet 4.6 on Anthropic's automated safety audits.
- Deliberately limited cyber capability compared with Opus-class models, shipped with cyber safeguards enabled by default.
6. Updated tokenizer
- Uses a new tokenizer (shared with the Opus 4.7/4.8 line) that can map the same text to up to 1.35x more tokens than Sonnet 4.6 - introductory pricing is set so the switch is roughly cost-neutral.
Claude 4 Sonnet
- Hybrid reasoning: supports both fast (“near-instant”) and extended thinking modes.
- Optimised for responsiveness, cost and high-volume production workloads.
- Strong coding performance relative to prior Sonnet versions (improved over Sonnet 3.7).
- Available even in free tiers (alongside paid plans).
- Better suited for general-purpose use and agents where speed + cost-efficiency matter.
Use Claude 5 Sonnet or Claude 4 Sonnet - or both
Appaca is the AI workspace for operators. Build internal tools and AI co-workers powered by Claude 5 Sonnet or Claude 4 Sonnet - connected to your real data and ready for your whole team. No code, no deployment.
Describe it, and it's built
Tell the Appaca agent the internal tool you need and it builds a working app powered by Claude 5 Sonnet or Claude 4 Sonnet. No code, no API keys, no deployment.
Switch models without rebuilding
Start on Claude 5 Sonnet, test the same tool on Claude 4 Sonnet, and keep whichever performs better - the rest of your app stays exactly as it is.
Automated for the whole team
Schedule tools to run on autopilot - daily digests, weekly reports, real-time triggers - and share them with your whole team from one workspace.
Describe it, and it's built
Tell the Appaca agent what your team needs and it builds a working app powered by Claude 5 Sonnet or Claude 4 Sonnet - connected to the tools you already use.
Related comparisons
See how Claude 5 Sonnet and Claude 4 Sonnet stack up against other models in the directory.
FAQs
They cost the same overall: both charge $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens.
They are equal: both Claude 5 Sonnet and Claude 4 Sonnet support a 1M tokens context window.
It depends on the job. Compare the pricing, context window, and strengths above against your workload - and remember the choice isn't permanent. In Appaca you can build a tool on Claude 5 Sonnet, test the same tool on Claude 4 Sonnet, and switch at any time without rebuilding anything.
Yes. Appaca is a no-code AI workspace: describe the internal tool your team needs and the Appaca agent builds it as a working app powered by Claude 5 Sonnet, Claude 4 Sonnet, or any other model in the directory - with a built-in database, team access, and integrations. No API keys to wire up and nothing to deploy.
Build AI tools with Claude 5 Sonnet or Claude 4 Sonnet
Describe the tool your team needs and get a working app powered by the model you choose - with a built-in database, team access, and integrations. No code, no deployment.