QUICK VERDICT — BEFORE AUGUST 31 DEADLINE
● Sonnet 5 now: $2/$10/M — quality close to Opus 4.8 at a fraction of the cost
● Sonnet 5 after Aug 31: $3/$15/M
● Haiku 4.5: Faster, cheaper, but lower quality ceiling — best for classification, routing, simple extraction
● Best window: Now through August 31 — route Sonnet 5-quality work through Sonnet 5 at Haiku-adjacent pricing
● After August 31: Haiku 4.5 for speed/cost, Sonnet 5 for quality at $3/M, Opus 5 for hard reasoning at $5/M
August 31 action item
Any batch processing job, large content generation run, or high-volume analysis workload that can be completed before August 31 should be routed through Sonnet 5 at $2/M rather than Haiku 4.5 or Sonnet 5 after the price increase. The quality ceiling difference between Sonnet 5 and Haiku 4.5 is meaningful for tasks that require judgment, nuance, or longer output. The price difference at $2/M vs Haiku's pricing is smaller than it will be at $3/M after August 31.
Haiku 4.5 after August 31: Still the right choice for latency-sensitive classification, routing, structured extraction, and any task where response time matters more than nuanced quality — chatbot routing, tag generation, simple summarisation at scale.
Last updated July 31, 2026. Related: Claude model pricing full guide →
⚖ Our Verdict
Before August 31: Sonnet 5 at $2/M is the right choice for most quality-requiring high-volume work — quality ceiling well above Haiku 4.5 at a price gap that closes September 1. After August 31: Haiku 4.5 for speed/cost (classification, routing, extraction), Sonnet 5 at $3/M for quality, Opus 5 at $5/M for hard reasoning.