# Claude Sonnet 4.6

> Anthropic's Sonnet-tier release from Feb 2026, pairing Opus-class reasoning with Sonnet pricing.

- Maker: Anthropic
- Line: Claude Sonnet
- Canonical page: https://ai-tldr.dev/models/claude-sonnet-4-6/
- Updated: 2026-07-01

## In short

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is Anthropic's mid-tier model released on February 17, 2026, and it became the default model on the Free and Pro plans at claude.ai and Claude Cowork on launch day. It has a 1M-token context window and costs $3.00 per million input tokens and $15.00 per million output tokens. You can use it through Anthropic, Amazon Bedrock and Google Vertex AI.

## Facts

| Fact | Value | Source |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Context window | 1M (max output 64K) | [1] |
| Input price | $3.00 per million tokens | [2] |
| Output price | $15.00 per million tokens | [2] |
| Licence | Proprietary · API only | [1] |
| Released | 17 February 2026 | [3] |
| Knowledge cutoff | August 2025 | [1] |

## Sources

1. [Amazon Bedrock model card](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/bedrock/latest/userguide/model-card-anthropic-claude-sonnet-4-6.html)
2. [Claude Sonnet 4.6 pricing](https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/models/overview.md)
3. [Introducing Claude Sonnet 4.6](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-4-6)

## Overview

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is Anthropic's mid-tier model released on February 17, 2026, and it became the default model on the Free and Pro plans at claude.ai and Claude Cowork on launch day. It is a hybrid reasoning model: it can answer quickly or use adaptive (extended) thinking for harder problems, and its depth is tunable through the effort parameter.

The headline of Sonnet 4.6 is that it closes much of the gap to flagship models. In Anthropic's early testing, developers preferred Sonnet 4.6 over Sonnet 4.5 by a wide margin, and even preferred it to the larger Opus 4.5 model 59% of the time. It posts 79.6% on SWE-bench Verified and 72.5% on OSWorld for computer use, within a point or two of Opus 4.6 on those developer-facing tasks, while keeping the same $3 / $15 per million token pricing as Sonnet 4.5.

Sonnet 4.6 ships with a 1 million token context window in beta, 64K max output tokens, and supports text and image (vision) input. It is available through claude.ai, Claude Code, the Claude API, Claude Platform on AWS, Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI, and Microsoft Foundry.

## Benchmarks

- SWE-bench Verified: 79.6% ([source](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-4-6))
- OSWorld (computer use): 72.5% ([source](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-4-6))
- Terminal-Bench 2.0: 59.1% ([source](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-4-6))
- GPQA Diamond: 74.1% ([source](https://www.nxcode.io/resources/news/claude-sonnet-4-6-complete-guide-benchmarks-pricing-2026))
- ARC-AGI-2: 60.4% ([source](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-4-6))

## Pricing

- Input: $3.00 per million tokens
- Output: $15.00 per million tokens

Same pricing as Sonnet 4.5. Prompt caching and Batch API discounts available.

Source: https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/models/overview.md

## Strengths

- Near-Opus coding and computer-use quality at one-fifth of Opus pricing
- 1M token context window (beta) for large-codebase and long-document work
- Adaptive thinking plus effort control (low/medium/high/max) to trade off speed vs depth
- Strong long-horizon agent planning and instruction following
- Default model for Free/Pro tiers, so the most broadly available capable Claude

## Best for

- Agentic coding and large-scale refactors in Claude Code and IDE integrations
- Computer-use and browser/desktop automation agents
- Long-context document analysis and knowledge work over the 1M-token window
- Customer support and tool-using assistants that need fast, cheap, capable responses
- Office and analyst tasks (spreadsheets, reports, research) that previously needed an Opus-class model

## How to access

- [Anthropic](https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/models/overview) — model id `claude-sonnet-4-6`
- [Amazon Bedrock](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/bedrock/latest/userguide/model-card-anthropic-claude-sonnet-4-6.html) — model id `anthropic.claude-sonnet-4-6`
- [Google Vertex AI](https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/build-with-claude/claude-on-vertex-ai) — model id `claude-sonnet-4-6`

## Claude Sonnet versions

- [Claude Sonnet 5](https://ai-tldr.dev/models/claude-sonnet-5/) (30 June 2026)
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 (17 February 2026) — this page
- [Claude Sonnet 4.5](https://ai-tldr.dev/models/claude-sonnet-4-5/) (29 September 2025)
- [Claude Sonnet 4](https://ai-tldr.dev/models/claude-sonnet-4/) (22 May 2025)
- [Claude 3.7 Sonnet](https://ai-tldr.dev/models/claude-3-7-sonnet/) (24 February 2025)
- [Claude 3.5 Sonnet (new)](https://ai-tldr.dev/models/claude-3-5-sonnet-v2/) (22 October 2024)
- [Claude 3.5 Sonnet](https://ai-tldr.dev/models/claude-3-5-sonnet/) (20 June 2024)
- [Claude 3 Sonnet](https://ai-tldr.dev/models/claude-3-sonnet/) (4 March 2024)

## FAQ

### What is the model ID for Claude Sonnet 4.6?

On the Claude API it is claude-sonnet-4-6. On Amazon Bedrock it is anthropic.claude-sonnet-4-6, and on Vertex AI it is claude-sonnet-4-6.

### How much does Claude Sonnet 4.6 cost?

It is $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens, the same pricing as Sonnet 4.5. Prompt caching and Batch API discounts can lower this further.

### What is the context window?

Sonnet 4.6 has a 1 million token context window (in beta) and supports up to 64K output tokens on the standard Messages API.

### How does Sonnet 4.6 compare to Opus 4.6?

On developer-facing tasks like SWE-bench Verified (79.6%) and OSWorld (72.5%), Sonnet 4.6 lands within one to two points of Opus 4.6 while costing one-fifth as much per token.

## Links

- [Introducing Claude Sonnet 4.6](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-4-6)
- [Models overview (Claude docs)](https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/models/overview)
- [Amazon Bedrock model card](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/bedrock/latest/userguide/model-card-anthropic-claude-sonnet-4-6.html)
- [Sonnet 4.6 benchmarks & pricing guide](https://www.nxcode.io/resources/news/claude-sonnet-4-6-complete-guide-benchmarks-pricing-2026)
- [DataCamp: Sonnet 4.6 review](https://www.datacamp.com/blog/claude-sonnet-4-6)
- [TechCrunch: Anthropic releases Sonnet 4.6](https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/17/anthropic-releases-sonnet-4-6/)
- [Claude Sonnet 4.6 pricing](https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/models/overview.md)

Source: AI/TLDR LLM registry, https://ai-tldr.dev/models/claude-sonnet-4-6/