Claude Sonnet 5 Launches with Enhanced Agentic Capabilities and Competitive Pricing

Claude Sonnet 5 is designed to be the most agentic model in the Sonnet series, capable of making plans and using tools autonomously.

It offers performance close to Opus 4.8 at a lower cost, showing significant improvements in reasoning, tool use, coding, and knowledge work compared to Sonnet 4.6.

Safety assessments indicate that Sonnet 5 has a lower rate of undesirable behaviors than its predecessor, making it safer for agentic tasks.

The model is available as the default for Free and Pro plans, and can be accessed by Max, Team, and Enterprise users, as well as through the Claude API.

Introductory pricing is set at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens until August 31, 2026, after which prices will increase.

Feedback from early access partners highlights Sonnet 5's enhanced agentic capabilities, including its ability to complete complex tasks and check its own output.

While Sonnet 5 shows improvements in general intelligence, it performs worse in cybersecurity tasks compared to Opus models, leading to the implementation of cyber safeguards by default.

Overall, Sonnet 5 represents a significant advancement in AI capabilities while maintaining a focus on safety and cost-effectiveness.