Anthropic

Claude 5.5 Sonnet

Anthropic next-generation frontier model featuring autonomous SWE capabilities, high-reliability tool loops, and industry-leading coding benchmarks.

#2released Oct 12, 2026·Proprietary·Not disclosed
textimage1M ctxreasoning
Intelligence
94.8 #2
AAQI 95.0
Output Speed
94 t/s
ITL 10.6 ms/tok
Blended price (3:1)
$6 /1M
In $3/M · Out $15/M
Context
1M
≈ 2,500 A4 pages · max out 65,536

Quality Domain Radar

6-Axis Frontier Evaluation vs Category Average & Flagship

Claude 5.5 Sonnet
Claude Mythos Preview (#1)
Average (68)
Coding (91.5)Mathematics (94.2)Hard Science (GPQA) (95)Agentic & Tool Use (89.4)Knowledge (MMLU) (88)Vision / Multimodal (96)

Radar axes are approximated from category scores where direct benchmark measurements are missing — see Methodology.

Strengths & Trade-offs

Where it wins

  • Best-in-class agentic coding — top of the SWE-bench Verified tier
  • Preferred for long Claude Code sessions; consolidates shared logic instead of duplicating
  • 1M context + 65K max output window
  • Strong price-to-capability versus Opus-class models

Trade-offs to watch

  • Proprietary — no self-hosting or fine-tuning
  • High-effort runs get expensive on long sessions
  • Vision understanding trails Gemini's native multimodality

Killer Use Cases

Claude Code refactors
Multi-file issue-to-PR work — the model most developers pick for day-long sessions.
SWE-bench agents
Top-tier verified software-engineering agent loops with tool use.
Terminal agents
Shell planning, CI debugging and deployment automation.

Developer Quickstart & API

Set ANTHROPIC_API_KEY first — get an API key
curl https://api.anthropic.com/v1/messages \
  -H "x-api-key: $ANTHROPIC_API_KEY" \
  -H "anthropic-version: 2023-06-01" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "claude-sonnet-5-5",
    "max_tokens": 1024,
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Refactor this function for O(n) time and explain the change."}]
  }'

Official Resources & Links

API deployment

Compare hosts & latency

Throughput, TTFT and cache pricing across Groq, Cerebras, Together, DeepInfra, Fireworks, Bedrock and Azure.

GroqCerebrasTogether AIDeepInfraFireworks AIAWS BedrockAzure AI
View providers matrix →

Scores by Source

Head-to-head Live Matchups

Live Specs & Architecture

Under the hood
Sonnet 5.5 — undisclosed transformer
  • Extended thinking with adjustable effort levels (low → xhigh)
  • Context compaction keeps long agent sessions coherent without dropping state
  • 1M-token context with prompt caching for repo-scale prompts
Release date
Oct 12, 2026
Architecture
Sonnet 5.5 — undisclosed transformer
Parameters
Not disclosed
License
Proprietary
Context Window
1,000,000 tokens
Max Output
65,536 tokens
Modalities
text + image
Cache Pricing
read $0.3 · write $3.75 /1M
Reasoning
Effort levels
Input Price
$3/M
Output Price
$15/M
Output Speed
94 t/s
Time to First Token
—
Data Updated
Oct 14, 2026

Estimated monthly bill

Estimated monthly spend
$0.00
Calculating savings vs GPT-4o...

Cite & embed

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BibTeX
@misc{llmpodium2026claudesonnet55,
  title = {Benchmark Analysis and Intelligence Evaluation of Claude 5.5 Sonnet},
  author = {LLMPodium Research},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://llmpodium.com/models/claude-sonnet-5-5}
}

Embed Score Badge

Add a live Podium Score badge to your GitHub or Hugging Face README — it links back to the live ranking.

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Claude 5.5 Sonnet LLMPodium Score
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