Which is cheaper, Claude Haiku 4.5 or Claude Sonnet 5?

Claude Haiku 4.5. On a task of 1,500 input and 500 output tokens across 3 calls, Claude Haiku 4.5 costs $0.01200 per task against $0.02400 for Claude Sonnet 5, which makes it 2x cheaper (a 50% saving).

How much do Claude Haiku 4.5 and Claude Sonnet 5 charge per million tokens?

Claude Haiku 4.5: $1 per million input tokens and $5 per million output tokens. Claude Sonnet 5: $2 input and $10 output. These are published list rates as of August 2026, excluding cached, batch and long-context tiers.

What does a million tasks cost on Claude Haiku 4.5 vs Claude Sonnet 5?

At the same fixed profile, one million tasks cost $12,000 on Claude Haiku 4.5 and $24,000 on Claude Sonnet 5. The gap comes entirely from list-price differences, not from any difference in the work done.

Model price comparisons · August 2026

Claude Haiku 4.5 vs Claude Sonnet 5: API pricing compared

Same task, same tokens, two invoices. Every figure on this page is computed from our open pricing dataset, not copied from a blog post.

Claude Haiku 4.5 is 2x cheaper than Claude Sonnet 5 on a realistic task profile of 1,500 input and 500 output tokens per call, 3 calls per task: $0.01200 against $0.02400 per task, a 50% saving on identical work. Run a million tasks a month and that is the difference between $12,000 and $24,000.

Model	Input $/1M tok	Output $/1M tok	Output multiple	$/task	$/1M tasks
Claude Haiku 4.5Anthropic · fast	$1	$5	5x	$0.01200	$12,000
Claude Sonnet 5Anthropic · mid	$2	$10	5x	$0.02400	$24,000

Monthly bill at three volumes

Tasks / month	Claude Haiku 4.5	Claude Sonnet 5	Gap
10,000	$120	$240	$120
100,000	$1,200	$2,400	$1,200
1,000,000	$12,000	$24,000	$12,000

Where the money goes on each

Claude Haiku 4.5 prices output at 5x its input rate, so on this profile output is 63% of its task cost. Claude Sonnet 5 prices output at 5x input, putting output at 63% of cost. The model with the higher output multiple rewards capping response length more; the one with the higher input share rewards prompt caching and context trimming more. Cost tells you nothing about quality: run both on twenty of your real cases before deciding, and treat the cheaper model as the default until it demonstrably fails.

Break-even against a dedicated GPU

Against a $2/hour dedicated instance ($1,460/month fixed), self-hosting overtakes Claude Haiku 4.5 at 121,667 tasks per month and overtakes Claude Sonnet 5 at 60,833 tasks per month. The full method is in the self-hosting break-even guide.

Pricing the self-hosted side? Compare on-demand GPU rates:

Compare GPU cloud pricing →

Plug your own token counts into the $/task calculator, or read the full ten-model pricing comparison.

Compare against other models

Frequently asked

Which is cheaper, Claude Haiku 4.5 or Claude Sonnet 5?: Claude Haiku 4.5. On a task of 1,500 input and 500 output tokens across 3 calls, Claude Haiku 4.5 costs $0.01200 per task against $0.02400 for Claude Sonnet 5, which makes it 2x cheaper (a 50% saving).
How much do Claude Haiku 4.5 and Claude Sonnet 5 charge per million tokens?: Claude Haiku 4.5: $1 per million input tokens and $5 per million output tokens. Claude Sonnet 5: $2 input and $10 output. These are published list rates as of August 2026, excluding cached, batch and long-context tiers.
What does a million tasks cost on Claude Haiku 4.5 vs Claude Sonnet 5?: At the same fixed profile, one million tasks cost $12,000 on Claude Haiku 4.5 and $24,000 on Claude Sonnet 5. The gap comes entirely from list-price differences, not from any difference in the work done.