Claude Models8 min read
Claude Sonnet vs Opus: Which Model Should You Actually Use?
Sonnet delivers 97–99% of Opus's coding ability at roughly 40% of the price. Here's the benchmark data, the pricing math, and a simple decision framework.
Sonnet delivers 97–99% of Opus's coding ability at roughly 40% of the price. Here's the benchmark data, the pricing math, and a simple decision framework.
Claude Sonnet 5 is Anthropic's balanced daily-driver model — near-Opus performance at $3/$15, a 1M-token context window, and adaptive thinking on by default.