Claude Sonnet 4.5 API Pricing
Anthropic · Frontier · Proprietary · released 2025-09. Prices in USD per 1 million tokens. Data snapshot: 2026-09-28.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 has held the same list price since 2026-08-15 and is the 2nd cheapest of 31 Frontier models. None of its 5 hosts undercuts the price quoted here. It is rated a stable release but does not meet all four criteria of the FinOps Friendly badge.
- Input: $3.00 per 1M tokens
- Output: $15.00 per 1M tokens
- Batch API (input/output): $1.50 / $7.50
- Prompt-cache read: $0.30
- Context window: 1M
- Arena ELO: 1455 (as of 2026-09-25)
- Available on: Direct API, AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex, OpenRouter (curated by hand, verify with the provider)
- AWS Bedrock regions: ap-northeast-1, ap-northeast-3, ap-southeast-1, eu-central-1, eu-north-1, eu-south-1, eu-south-2, eu-west-1, eu-west-3, us-east-1, us-east-2, us-west-2
Claude Sonnet 4.5 market position
On blended price ($11.40 per 1M tokens at 30% input, 70% output) it is cheaper than 77% of Frontier models: 2nd cheapest of 31, tied with 6 others. Across every category it is cheaper than 8% of priced text models in the catalogue: 252nd cheapest of 281, tied with 6 others. Its Arena ELO of 1455 ranks 30th of the 68 models that carry one, above 57% of them.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 licence, size and capabilities
Claude Sonnet 4.5 is recorded here as proprietary: access is through an API, priced by the token. Its parameter count is not published. Listed capabilities: Text, Vision, Reasoning, Code, Agents. Filling its 1M context window once costs $3.00 in input tokens at list price.
Monthly cost at 100K requests, by business use case
From the after-discounts figure (prompt caching on the cached input share, batch API for async workloads, only where the provider publishes those rates), which assumes you implement both, to the list price. One figure means no discount is published.
| Use case | Tokens (in/out) | Monthly (after discounts – list) |
|---|---|---|
| Support Ticket | 1,500 / 500 | $971 – $1.2K |
| Knowledge Q&A | 2,000 / 800 | $1.4K – $1.8K |
| Meeting Summary | 10,000 / 1,200 | $2.3K – $4.8K |
| Marketing Content | 2,500 / 1,800 | $3.3K – $3.5K |
| Coding Task | 3,000 / 2,000 | $3.5K – $3.9K |
| Invoice Processing | 1,500 / 600 | $641 – $1.4K |
| Call Summary | 2,000 / 700 | $810 – $1.6K |
| Agent Workflow | 6,000 / 3,000 | $5.2K – $6.3K |
Claude Sonnet 4.5 pricing by host
A host is a company that runs the model and sells it by the token — the lab that made it, a cloud platform like Amazon Bedrock, Azure or Vertex, or an independent provider. One model, several sellers, and often several prices. This model is sold by 5 different hosts. The price quoted above is the one we publish so that models stay comparable; it is not necessarily the cheapest way to buy this model. List prices as published on 2026-09-28 via OpenRouter — negotiated rates, committed-use discounts and provisioned capacity are not shown.
The price we publish is already the cheapest of the 5 hosts: Claude Platform on AWS at $3.00 input / $15.00 output per 1M tokens. All of them charge within 10% of one another.
| Host | Input $/1M | Output $/1M |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Platform on AWS (the price shown above) | $3.00 | $15.00 |
| Azure (the price shown above) | $3.00 | $15.00 |
| Amazon Bedrock (the price shown above) | $3.00 | $15.00 |
| Anthropic (the price shown above) | $3.00 | $15.00 |
| Google (the price shown above) | $3.00 | $15.00 |
Claude Sonnet 4.5 price history
Claude Sonnet 4.5 has been in our daily price archive since tracking began on 2026-08-15, when it listed at $3.00 input / $15.00 output per 1M tokens. No list price change since tracking began on 2026-08-15. Last checked against the 2026-09-28 snapshot.
Alternatives to Claude Sonnet 4.5
- Next cheaper Frontier model: GPT-5.4 (OpenAI) at $11.25 blended, 1% less.
- Next more expensive: Claude Opus 5.5 (Anthropic) at $15.20 blended, 33% more.
The nearest Frontier models on Arena ELO, each with its blended price and score difference against Claude Sonnet 4.5.
- GPT-5.4 (OpenAI) — $2.50 in / $15.00 out per 1M, Arena ELO 1465: 1% cheaper, 10 ELO points higher
- Claude Opus 4.5 (Anthropic) — $5.00 in / $25.00 out per 1M, Arena ELO 1470: 67% more expensive, 15 ELO points higher
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Anthropic) — $3.00 in / $15.00 out per 1M, Arena ELO 1472: same blended price, 17 ELO points higher
- Claude Opus 4.8 (Anthropic) — $5.00 in / $25.00 out per 1M, Arena ELO 1474: 67% more expensive, 19 ELO points higher
- Cheapest within 15 Arena points: GPT-5.6 Luna (OpenAI), 92% cheaper, 1 ELO point lower, out of 18 models in that band.
- Highest Arena ELO within 20% of this price: Kimi K3 (Moonshot), same blended price, 33 ELO points higher, out of 6 models in that price band.
Common questions about Claude Sonnet 4.5 pricing
- How much does Claude Sonnet 4.5 cost?
- Claude Sonnet 4.5 costs $3.00 per million input tokens and $15.00 per million output tokens on the API.
- Does Claude Sonnet 4.5 offer batch or cached pricing?
- Yes. Batch API pricing is $1.50/M input and $7.50/M output. Prompt-cache reads cost $0.30/M.
- What would Claude Sonnet 4.5 cost per month?
- For a support-ticket workload (1,500 input + 500 output tokens per request) at 100K requests/month, Claude Sonnet 4.5 costs about $1.2K at list prices.
- Has the price of Claude Sonnet 4.5 changed?
- Claude Sonnet 4.5 has been in our daily price archive since tracking began on 2026-08-15, when it listed at $3.00 input / $15.00 output per 1M tokens. No list price change since tracking began on 2026-08-15. Last checked against the 2026-09-28 snapshot.
These are list prices: real cost also depends on caching, batching, negotiated discounts, marketplace agreements, and existing contracts. Get a FinOps review from OptimNow or compare all models.
Build the business case for Claude Sonnet 4.5 in the AI ROI Calculator: add your business value on top of these costs to get ROI, break-even and payback.
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