Claude Sonnet 4.6 pricing for code generation

Quick start

Call Claude Sonnet 4.6 with the Anthropic Python SDK:

from anthropic import Anthropic

client = Anthropic()
response = client.messages.create(
    model="claude-sonnet-4-6",
    max_tokens=4000,
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Your prompt here"}]
)
# Cost: ~$0.0660 per call at standard rates
# Input:  $3.00/MTok
# Output: $15.00/MTok

How Claude Sonnet 4.6 compares on cost

Per-call cost for all models scoring 50+ on code generation benchmarks. Hover for details.

Cheapest viable option: Claude Haiku 4.5 at $0.0220/call (67% less, 72/100 quality).

What drives code generation cost

Cost here is dominated by output, not input: the model writes far more than you ask. A prompt with a short spec and a few reference files runs 2K input, but a complete module comes back at 4K output or more, so a model's output rate matters roughly twice as much as its input rate. The biggest saving is not a cheaper model: it is caching the system prompt and coding standards you resend on every call.

For Claude Sonnet 4.6 specifically, that means output tokens cost 5.0x more than input, at $15.00 vs $3.00 per MTok. At this use case’s 2,000/4,000 token split, output accounts for 91% of the $0.0660 per-call cost.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 quality benchmarks for code generation

Performance across all task types

Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores by task type. Code Generation highlighted.

Confidence scores are a third-party benchmark snapshot from week 26 of 2026. This snapshot is 17 weeks old, so treat the scores as directional and validate against your own evals.

About Claude Sonnet 4.6

Other models from Claude

You can compare Claude Sonnet 4.6 head-to-head against any other model on our model comparison pages, or track how pricing has changed over time on the pricing history tracker.

Frequently asked questions