Anthropic · AI model
Claude Sonnet 5.5
Anthropic's mid-size model balancing speed and capability. 1M-token context, 128K max output, text and image input, adaptive thinking on by default. $2 / $10 per million input / output tokens.
Last verified Available 15 sources
Key specs
- Provider
- Anthropic
- Family
- Claude Sonnet
- API identifier
- claude-sonnet-5-5
- Availability
- Available
- Release date
- 2026-09-28
- License
- Proprietary (Anthropic Commercial Terms of Service)
- Context window
- 1,000,000 tokens
- Max output
- 128,000 tokens
- Knowledge cutoff
- June 2026
- API access
- Yes
- Consumer app
- Yes
Capabilities
Inputs
- Text input Yes Input -> output: text and images -> text
- Image input Yes JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP; high-resolution tier (2576 px long edge) on Claude 4.7 and later models (Vision docs)
- Audio input No Documented input modalities are text and images only
- Video input No Documented input modalities are text and images only
- File input Yes PDF support and Files API listed as supported features
Outputs
- Text output Yes
- Image output No Claude is documented as an image understanding model only; it cannot generate images
- Audio output No Documented output modality is text only
Features
- Reasoning Optional Adaptive thinking on by default; 'disabled' returns a 400 error, but 'between_tools' turns off up-front thinking at high effort or below (progress updates between tool calls still arrive as thinking blocks)
- Tool calling Yes Server-side and client-side tools supported; forced tool use (tool_choice any/tool) returns a 400 error
- Web search Yes Server-side web search tool ($10 per 1,000 searches plus tokens); dynamic filtering documented for Claude 4.6 and later models; not available on Amazon Bedrock
"Unknown" means we have not verified this capability yet; it does not mean the model lacks it.
Pricing
Estimate your monthly cost →| Dimension | Tier | Price | Since | Verified | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Input tokens | base | $2.00 per 1M tokens | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-25 | Pricing - Claude Platform Docs Standard rate across the full 1M context window |
| Cached input tokens | base | $0.10 per 1M tokens | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-25 | Pricing - Claude Platform Docs Cache hits and refreshes; 0.05x base input |
| Cache writes | base | $2.50 per 1M tokens | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-25 | Pricing - Claude Platform Docs 5-minute cache write (1.25x base input) |
| Cache writes (1-hour retention) | base | $4.00 per 1M tokens | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-25 | Pricing - Claude Platform Docs 2x base input |
| Output tokens | base | $10.00 per 1M tokens | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-25 | Pricing - Claude Platform Docs |
| Batch input tokens | base | $1.00 per 1M tokens | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-25 | Pricing - Claude Platform Docs Batch API: 50% of standard (pricing page batch table) |
| Batch output tokens | base | $5.00 per 1M tokens | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-25 | Pricing - Claude Platform Docs Batch API: 50% of standard (pricing page batch table) |
| Tool and search requests | base | $10.00 per 1,000 requests | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-25 | Pricing - Claude Platform Docs Web search tool on the Claude API: per 1,000 searches, plus standard token costs for search-generated content; a search that ends in an error is not billed |
Prices are shown in the currency the provider publishes; we never convert currencies.
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Setting | Score | Reported by | Measured | Verified | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AutomationBench % tasks completed correctly, higher is better | v1.0.6; default fallbacks; between_tools thinking | 18.57 % | Third party | — | 2026-10-12 | AutomationBench AI benchmark leaderboard (Zapier) |
| v1.0.6; default fallbacks; high effort | 29.38 % | Third party | — | 2026-10-12 | AutomationBench AI benchmark leaderboard (Zapier) | |
| v1.0.6; default fallbacks; low effort | 18.26 % | Third party | — | 2026-10-12 | AutomationBench AI benchmark leaderboard (Zapier) | |
| v1.0.6; default fallbacks; max effort | 44.75 % | Third party | — | 2026-10-12 | AutomationBench AI benchmark leaderboard (Zapier) | |
| v1.0.6; default fallbacks; max effort; run by Zapier | 44.7 % | Self-reported | — | 2026-10-12 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 System Card (Anthropic, 2026-09-28) | |
| v1.0.6; default fallbacks; medium effort | 23.29 % | Third party | — | 2026-10-12 | AutomationBench AI benchmark leaderboard (Zapier) | |
| v1.0.6; default fallbacks; xhigh effort | 36.83 % | Third party | — | 2026-10-12 | AutomationBench AI benchmark leaderboard (Zapier) | |
| DeepSWE v1.1 % resolved (pass@1), higher is better | v1.1; max effort; scaffold not stated; mean of 5 trials | 71 % | Self-reported | — | 2026-10-12 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 System Card (Anthropic, 2026-09-28) |
| FrontierMath Tiers 1-3 (v2) accuracy %, higher is better | Tiers 1-3 v2; max effort; Epoch harness (Python tool) | 88.8 % | Third party | 2026-09-29 | 2026-10-12 | FrontierMath Tiers 1-3 (v2) leaderboard (Epoch AI) |
| GDPval-AA v2.1 Elo, higher is better | high effort; Default Fallback | 1,550 Elo | Third party | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-12 | GDPval-AA v2.1 Leaderboard (Artificial Analysis) |
| low effort; Default Fallback | 1,175 Elo | Third party | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-12 | GDPval-AA v2.1 Leaderboard (Artificial Analysis) | |
| max effort; Default Fallback | 1,838 Elo | Third party | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-12 | GDPval-AA v2.1 Leaderboard (Artificial Analysis) | |
| max effort; run by Artificial Analysis | 1,844 Elo | Self-reported | — | 2026-10-12 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 System Card (Anthropic, 2026-09-28) | |
| medium effort; Default Fallback | 1,323 Elo | Third party | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-12 | GDPval-AA v2.1 Leaderboard (Artificial Analysis) | |
| xhigh effort; Default Fallback | 1,730 Elo | Third party | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-12 | GDPval-AA v2.1 Leaderboard (Artificial Analysis) | |
| xhigh effort; run by Artificial Analysis | 1,725 Elo | Self-reported | — | 2026-10-12 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 System Card (Anthropic, 2026-09-28) | |
| Humanity's Last Exam accuracy %, higher is better | no tools; max effort; full set (2,500 q), Claude Opus 4.6 grader | 56.9 % | Self-reported | — | 2026-10-12 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 System Card (Anthropic, 2026-09-28) |
| with tools (web search/fetch, programmatic tool calling, code execution); max effort; Claude Opus 4.6 grader | 64.5 % | Self-reported | — | 2026-10-12 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 System Card (Anthropic, 2026-09-28) | |
| xhigh effort; Scale Labs harness, o3-mini judge (tools not stated) | 46.12 % | Third party | — | 2026-10-12 | Humanity's Last Exam leaderboard (Scale Labs) | |
| OSWorld 2.0 % tasks completed, higher is better | v2.1 (Sep 10, 2026 task files), full set (108 tasks), partial; max effort; 500-step budget | 80.1 % | Self-reported | — | 2026-10-12 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 System Card (Anthropic, 2026-09-28) |
| v2.1 (Sep 10, 2026 task files), full set (108 tasks), strict; max effort; 500-step budget | 43.5 % | Self-reported | — | 2026-10-12 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 System Card (Anthropic, 2026-09-28) | |
| v2.1, offline subset (82 tasks), partial; max effort; 500-step budget | 83.9 % | Self-reported | — | 2026-10-12 | Claude Haiku 5.5 System Card (Anthropic, 2026-10-07) | |
| v2.1, offline subset (82 tasks), strict; max effort; 500-step budget | 48.8 % | Self-reported | — | 2026-10-12 | Claude Haiku 5.5 System Card (Anthropic, 2026-10-07) | |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 % tasks resolved, higher is better | max effort; Claude Code (--bare), 5 trials/task | 70.6 % | Self-reported | — | 2026-10-12 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 System Card (Anthropic, 2026-09-28) |
| max effort; Claude Code harness | 61.8 % | Third party | — | 2026-10-12 | Terminal-Bench 4.0 leaderboard (tbench.ai) | |
| Text Arena Arena score, higher is better | Overall, style control on; xhigh effort | 1,476 | Third party | 2026-10-08 | 2026-10-12 | Text Arena leaderboard (Arena) |
Leaderboard versions (for example 1.0.5 and 1.0.6) are not comparable. Some results use fallback routing for refused steps: for "Claude Fable 5.1 (with Opus 5 Fallback)", Opus 5 handled 260 of 657 tasks. Artificial Analysis runs a separate leaderboard, AutomationBench-AA, which uses a guardrail-adjusted metric; its scores are not comparable with Zapier's. The partial_credit metric is for diagnostics only. The leaderboard shows no per-row evaluation dates.
The official leaderboard uses mini-swe-agent for all models and shows whole-number percentages with margins of about ±1 to ±6 points. Providers often report scores from their own scaffolds or effort settings; DeepSeek reports 65.5% to 74.2% for the same model depending on the scaffold. DeepSWE v1 scores are not comparable with v1.1. With only 113 tasks, small differences are within noise.
FrontierMath was developed with funding from OpenAI, which has exclusive access to a subset of the problems. Scores from v1 and from Tier 4 (a separate 43-problem expansion set) are not comparable with Tiers 1-3 (v2). The best models score about 94%, so the benchmark separates mid-size models better than it separates frontier models. Epoch's numbers come from its own harness (Python tool, 1M-token limit), which can differ from providers' internal setups. Margins are about ±1.4 to ±2.6 points.
Elo is a relative rating: values change as models are added and the scale is re-anchored, so always store the date a rating was read. For example, Anthropic's launch page gives 1846 for Claude Opus 5.5, while the leaderboard on 2026-10-12 shows 1866 (Max, Default Fallback). Earlier versions (Google cites "GDPVal-AA v2") are not comparable. Judging is done by an LLM, not by human experts. Anthropic models are listed with "Default Fallback", meaning refused steps are routed to a fallback model. AA-Briefcase and GDP.pdf are separate evaluations.
Results differ a lot by setting: with tools versus without tools (Anthropic reports 45.9% without tools and 57.4% with tools for Claude Haiku 5.5), and the full set versus the text-only subset. Providers use different judge models and harnesses (Scale uses o3-mini; Alibaba states GPT-4o). Derived sets such as HLE-Verified (a third-party revision with 1,811 scored items), HLE-Rolling and HLE-Diamond are different item sets and are not comparable. The questions are public, so contamination is possible, and community reviews have reported flawed items.
Numbers are only comparable when release, task set (full or offline), metric (binary or partial), step budget (150, 300 or 500) and agent approach (standard or batch tool calls) all match. Providers usually quote partial scores, which are much higher than binary completion. Claude Opus 5 at max effort on v2.1 scores 44.33% binary and 77.67% partial. The verified leaderboard is run by the maintainers and covers few current models, so most numbers are self-reported. The original OSWorld and OSWorld-Verified (369 tasks) are a different benchmark and are not recorded here.
Scores depend heavily on the agent harness (for example Claude Code, Codex, Grok Build or mini-SWE-agent) and on the reasoning effort, so the same model appears several times on the leaderboard. Leaderboard rows are often submitted by the organisation that builds the agent. Providers' own runs can differ from the leaderboard: Anthropic reports 66.4% for Claude Opus 5.5 at max effort, while the leaderboard lists 64.8% ± 3.1%. Versions 2.0, 2.1 and 3.0 and Artificial Analysis' "Terminal-Bench Hard" use different task sets and are not comparable with 4.0. Margins are about ±3 points.
Scores measure voter preference, which can be influenced by answer style and length. The leaderboard offers a style-control adjustment, so record which view was used. Scores shift with every update, so a value is only meaningful together with its leaderboard date. Entries marked "Preliminary" or with few votes have wide confidence intervals. The same model can appear several times with different reasoning-effort suffixes (for example -high or -max). Category views (Coding, Math, Creative Writing and others) are different rankings from Overall.
One row per result, without rank numbers: each result was measured under its own setting (effort level, harness, tools, test version), as stated by the source, and scores compare only within the same setting. Self-reported results come from the provider and have not been reproduced independently.
Rankings
- #2 of 39 in Best AI for business as of 2026-10-26
- #4 of 20 in Best AI for coding as of 2026-10-27
- #4 of 14 in Best AI for research as of 2026-10-26
- #14 of 26 in Best AI for students as of 2026-10-26
- #18 of 42 in Best AI API as of 2026-10-26
Derived from our published ranking snapshots; each ranking explains its criteria and weights.
Compare Claude Sonnet 5.5
Guides
- AI token pricing explained: input, output, cached and batch rates
- Reasoning models explained: thinking modes, effort and cost
- Multimodal AI explained: image, audio, video and file inputs, and what they cost
- Context windows explained: limits, long-context pricing and recall
- How to choose an AI model: a practical decision framework
About Claude Sonnet 5.5
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (released 2026-09-28) is the current Sonnet-line model, described by Anthropic as combining speed and intelligence; its comparative latency is rated "Fast". Adaptive thinking is on by default with effort default high; thinking cannot be set to disabled, but up-front thinking can be turned off with the between_tools setting at high effort or below. Prices match Claude Sonnet 5 except for cache reads, which are half the Sonnet 5 rate. claude.com/pricing lists Sonnet-family access on all Claude app plans, including Free.
Strengths and weaknesses
Strengths
- 1M-token context window; 128K max output tokens (up to 300K on the Message Batches API with the output-300k beta header)
- Comparative latency rated "Fast" at $2 / $10 per million input / output tokens
- Cache reads at 0.05x base input ($0.10 per million tokens; reduced from $0.20 on 2026-10-07 per the API release notes)
- Up-front thinking can be turned off with the between_tools setting at high effort or below
Weaknesses
- Thinking type 'disabled' is rejected; between_tools is the lowest thinking setting
- Forced tool use (tool_choice any/tool) and non-default temperature/top_p/top_k return a 400 error
- Thinking blocks work only in the account that produced them or a linked account
Sources
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 - Claude Docs
- Commercial Terms of Service - Anthropic
- What's new in Claude Sonnet 5.5 - Claude Docs
- Vision - Claude Docs
- Thinking - Claude Docs
- Web search tool - Claude Docs
- Pricing - Claude Platform Docs
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 System Card (Anthropic, 2026-09-28)
- Terminal-Bench 4.0 leaderboard (tbench.ai)
- FrontierMath Tiers 1-3 (v2) leaderboard (Epoch AI)
- Claude Haiku 5.5 System Card (Anthropic, 2026-10-07)
- GDPval-AA v2.1 Leaderboard (Artificial Analysis)
- AutomationBench AI benchmark leaderboard (Zapier)
- Text Arena leaderboard (Arena)
- Humanity's Last Exam leaderboard (Scale Labs)
Last verified Page updated 2026-10-27