Anthropic launches Claude 3.5 Sonnet, more capable than Opus and cheaper

Anthropic has launched Claude 3.5 Sonnet, a new version of its language model that, according to the company, outperforms Claude 3 Opus — until now its most powerful model — in reasoning, coding and visual analysis. The important point is not just the improvement: it costs one-fifth as much as Opus both to process input text and to generate responses.

The launch also introduces Artifacts, a new Claude.ai feature that separates useful output from the conversation. Instead of leaving a document, webpage or block of code buried among messages, Claude displays it in its own workspace, where users can view, modify and reuse it.

More performance at Sonnet’s price

Claude 3.5 Sonnet retains the price of Claude 3 Sonnet: $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens. Tokens are the units of text these systems use to read instructions and produce a response.

Claude 3 Opus, by contrast, costs $15 per million input tokens and $75 per million output tokens. In other words, 3.5 Sonnet is a far more affordable alternative to Anthropic’s high-end model, without giving up its ability to compete with it on performance.

The company also says the new model runs at roughly twice Opus’s speed. For someone who uses a chatbot occasionally, that difference may seem secondary. For a company processing thousands of documents, serving customers or integrating the model into an application, price and speed determine whether a feature is viable beyond a demo.

In its internal evaluation of tool-based coding tasks, Anthropic says Claude 3.5 Sonnet solved 64% of the problems, compared with 38% for Claude 3 Opus. This type of test measures a model’s ability to tackle real-world software issues, where completing a few lines of code is not enough: it must locate files, interpret an error and propose coherent changes.

The comparison should be read with caution. Benchmarks make it possible to measure progress and compare models, but they do not replace testing in each user’s specific workflow. An assistant can perform very well on a battery of exercises and still make mistakes when interpreting incomplete data, applying an internal policy or generating code that looks correct but is not.

Artifacts takes work out of the chat window

The most visible new feature for Claude.ai users is Artifacts. When a conversation produces content that is sufficiently extensive and self-contained — such as code, a report, an SVG diagram or a small website — Claude can open it in a panel beside the chat.

The change may look like a UI update, but it affects how people use an assistant. Traditional chats mix instructions, responses, corrections and successive versions into a single stream. Finding the final result can be awkward, especially when working on a simple application or a document with multiple revisions.

With Artifacts, users can review the result while continuing to chat with the model. If Claude creates an HTML page, the workspace can display both the code and a preview of the result; if it drafts a document, the document remains separate from the explanations that led to its creation. The feature is available in preview to Claude.ai users.

Anthropic did not invent the idea of a workspace beside the chat. Microsoft and Google have already explored interfaces that combine text generation, editing and code execution. But bringing this format to Claude points to a competition that is no longer solely about answering better than the rival. The major labs want users to do the entire job inside their products.

A different strategy from reserving the best for the high end

Anthropic’s move has a clear commercial rationale. Instead of placing its most capable model at the highest price tier, the company is upgrading its mid-range option. That increases pressure on providers that draw a sharper line between their premium and cheaper models.

For developers and businesses, the promise is attractive: get reasoning performance close to or better than that of an elite model without multiplying the infrastructure bill. For Anthropic, the challenge will be proving that advantage holds up in everyday use, not just in its published evaluations.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet is already available through Claude.ai and Anthropic’s API. The company has said it is preparing new versions of Claude 3.5 Haiku and Claude 3.5 Opus, along with more features for Artifacts. For now, the launch shifts attention away from the largest model and toward a more practical question: how much useful performance can an assistant deliver before its cost stops making sense.