Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Claude Haiku 5.5: which API costs less?
Averaged across three realistic workloads, Claude Haiku 5.5 is about 95% cheaper than Claude Sonnet 5.5. Below: raw rates and side-by-side monthly costs, computed from prices verified 2026-10-17 (we track what you are billed today, promos included).
Rates per 1M tokens
| Model | Input | Output | Cached input |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Sonnet 5.5Anthropic | $2 | $10 | $0.100 |
| Claude Haiku 5.5Anthropic | $0.100 | $0.500 | $0.010 |
Claude Haiku 5.5: Prompts up to 100K tokens; longer prompts cost $0.50/$2.50.
Monthly cost, side by side
| Workload | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Claude Haiku 5.5 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
Customer-support chatbot 2M input + 0.5M output tokens/month, 60% of input served from prompt cache | $6.72 | $0.342 | Claude Haiku 5.5 −95% |
RAG / document Q&A 20M input + 1M output tokens/month, 70% cached (shared context) | $23.40 | $1.24 | Claude Haiku 5.5 −95% |
Agentic coding assistant 50M input + 5M output tokens/month, 80% cached (long sessions) | $74.00 | $3.90 | Claude Haiku 5.5 −95% |
Your traffic looks different? Run your own numbers in the calculator.
FAQ
Which is cheaper: Claude Sonnet 5.5 or Claude Haiku 5.5?
Across three realistic workloads (chatbot, RAG, agent), Claude Haiku 5.5 works out about 95% cheaper than Claude Sonnet 5.5 on average. Raw rates: Claude Sonnet 5.5 $2/$10 per 1M tokens vs Claude Haiku 5.5 $0.100/$0.500. Verified 2026-10-17.
Does prompt caching change the comparison?
Yes — cached input costs $0.100 on Claude Sonnet 5.5 and $0.010 on Claude Haiku 5.5. Our scenario numbers already include realistic cache hit rates.
Is cheaper always better?
No. Price is one axis — model capability, context window and latency differ. This page answers only the cost question; benchmark quality on your own tasks before switching.