AnthropicMultimodalReleased 17 February 2026
Claude Sonnet 4.6 pricing, context and benchmark
Sonnet 4.6 is Anthropic's most capable Sonnet-class model yet, with frontier performance across coding, agents, and professional work.
1M
Input context
128K
Output context
$3
Official input
$15
Official output
n/a
AA index
01 · Model Overview
Everything that matters, in one table
Context, pricing, cache, modalities and tooling, from the model registry and Artificial Analysis.
| Model | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| Model ID | anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6 |
| Provider | Anthropic |
| Release date | 17 February 2026 |
| Status | Generally available |
| Input context | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Output context | 128,000 tokens |
| Official input pricing | $3 per 1M tokens |
| Official output pricing | $15 per 1M tokens |
| Cache read pricing | $0.3 per 1M tokens (90% off input) |
| Market input pricing | $3 per 1M (cheapest route) |
| Market output pricing | $15 per 1M (cheapest route) |
| Highest route pricing | $3.3 in, $16.5 out per 1M |
| Input modalities | text · image · file |
| Output modalities | text |
| Reasoning control | Not exposed |
| Tool support | Text generation only |
| Tokenizer | Claude |
| Provider routes | 8 endpoints |
| Artificial Analysis index | Not published |
| Speed | 55 tokens/s, 1.72s to first token |
| Knowledge cutoff | Not publicly stated |
Input and output support
| Modality | Input | Output | Billed at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Text | ✓ yes | ✓ yes | $3 in |
| Image | ✓ yes | no | $3 in |
| Audio | no | no | not supported |
| Video | no | no | not supported |
| File (PDF) | ✓ yes | no | $3 in |
02 · Overview
What is Claude Sonnet 4.6?
Sonnet 4.6 is Anthropic's most capable Sonnet-class model yet, with frontier performance across coding, agents, and professional work.
It excels at iterative development, complex codebase navigation, end-to-end project management with...
Claude Sonnet 4.6 carries a 1M token window, uses the Claude tokenizer and is served by Anthropic. On Hoodgen it sits in the Multimodal tier of the model menu next to its siblings, so you can switch mid conversation without losing the thread.
03 · Release
Release and what changed from the previous version
Released17 February 2026
| Property | Claude Opus 4.6 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Released | 2026 | 2026 | Same release window |
| Context | 1M | 1M | Unchanged |
| Max output | 128K | 128K | Unchanged |
| Input price | $5 | $3 | Cheaper |
| Output price | $25 | $15 | Cheaper |
| Input modalities | text, image, file | text, image, file | Unchanged |
| AA index | n/a | n/a | Newer benchmark run |
04 · Capabilities
Features and capabilities
◉
Vision
Screenshots, charts and photographed documents are read at the text token rate.
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Files and PDFs
Documents go in as files rather than pasted text, keeping layout and tables intact.
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Prompt caching
Cached input costs $0.3 per million instead of $3, so stable prefixes get cheaper.
07 · Use cases
What can you do with Claude Sonnet 4.6?
Document understanding
Screenshots, charts, scanned pages and PDFs read in the prompt.
Mixed media briefs
One thread holding text, images and files together.
Extraction
Schema constrained JSON out of messy inputs.
Research synthesis
Several sources condensed with the figures preserved.
08 · Cost levers
Prompt caching and how to cut the bill
Cached input bills at $0.3 per million instead of $3, a 90% discount. Keep the system prompt and documents first and the changing question last, so every call hits the cache.
09 · Pricing
Claude Sonnet 4.6 pricing
Official pricing
List price
$3 / 1M in
$15 / 1M out
- $0.3 cached input
- 1M context
- text, image, file input
Cheapest route
$3 / 1M in
$15 / 1M out
- 8 routes on OpenRouter
- What Hoodgen routes to first
- Same model, lower bill
Highest route
$3.3 / 1M in
$16.5 / 1M out
- Priority or premium tier
- Best under load
- Use for latency critical calls
Market pricing, every route
| Provider | Tier | Input | Output | Cache read | Uptime 24h |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Platform on AWS | standard | $3 | $15 | $0.3 | 100.0% |
| Azure | standard | $3 | $15 | $0.3 | 100.0% |
| Anthropic | standard | $3 | $15 | $0.3 | 100.0% |
| Amazon Bedrock | standard | $3 | $15 | $0.3 | 100.0% |
| standard | $3 | $15 | $0.3 | 100.0% | |
| Amazon Bedrock | standard | $3.3 | $16.5 | $0.33 | 100.0% |
| Amazon Bedrock | standard | $3.3 | $16.5 | $0.33 | 100.0% |
| standard | $3.3 | $16.5 | $0.33 | 100.0% |
API pricing and cost calculator
| Rate | Per call | Total | Credits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cheapest route | $0.0501 | $25.05 | 23798 |
| List price | $0.0501 | $25.05 | 23798 |
| Highest route | $0.0907 | $45.38 | 43107 |
10 · Developers
API and developer information
| Model ID | anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6 |
| Endpoint | https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions |
| Parameters | prompt and max_tokens |
| Streaming | Yes, server sent events |
| Modality string | text+image+file->text |
| Max prompt tokens | 1,000,000 |
| Max completion tokens | 128,000 |
curl https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"model": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6",
"messages": [{ "role": "user", "content": "Summarise this document." }],
"max_tokens": 1024
}'11 · Limitations
Model limitations
| Text only output | It cannot generate images, audio or video. Pair it with an image model on Hoodgen when you need visuals. |
| Output cap | 128,000 tokens per request. Long deliverables have to be chunked. |
| Benchmarks not published | Artificial Analysis does not publish an Intelligence Index for this release, so no benchmark score is claimed here. |
| Knowledge cutoff | The provider does not state a fixed cutoff for every release. Verify very recent events against search. |
12 · Comparison
Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs other Anthropic models
| Model | Context | Input /1M | Output /1M | AA index | Released |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | 1M | $3 | $15 | n/a | 2026 |
| Claude Opus 4.1 | 200K | $15 | $75 | n/a | 2025 |
| Claude Fable 5 | 1M | $10 | $50 | n/a | 2026 |
| Claude Fable 5.1 | 1M | $10 | $50 | 49 | Sep 2026 |
| Claude Fable 5.2 | 1M | $8 | $40 | n/a | 2026 |
| Claude Opus 4.5 | 200K | $5 | $25 | n/a | 2025 |
13 · Privacy
Privacy and data policy
- On Hoodgen, prompts and attachments answer that request and stay in your conversation history so you can reopen it. They are not used to train models.
- Requests route through OpenRouter to Anthropic and are covered by that provider's API terms.
- Do not paste secrets or personal data you would not send to any hosted model.
14 · FAQ
Claude Sonnet 4.6 questions, answered
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is a multimodal model from Anthropic, released 17 February 2026. Sonnet 4.6 is Anthropic's most capable Sonnet-class model yet, with frontier performance across coding, agents, and professional work.
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Start chatting with Claude Sonnet 4.6
Free to try on Hoodgen AI, with a live credit estimate before every send. No API key, no setup.