Claude Sonnet 5.5: faster everyday coding at $2 input and $10 output

Anthropic positions Sonnet 5.5 for well-scoped coding and document work. Our practical starting point is a task with a clear acceptance criterion, such as repairing a known bug or producing a report from a fixed set of documents. That makes the comparison useful and repeatable.

Verify access in your chosen provider's catalogue before scheduling a rollout. Record the selected deployment and keep the previous configuration available. A release announcement alone does not establish account permissions, regional availability or the capacity needed by your application.

Anthropic reports more than 30% faster output and task savings of up to 30%, while keeping Sonnet 5's standard token rates. These are provider test results. Use the rates recorded above to calculate your own costs, and include the work required to accept the output.

Our recommendation is to evaluate finished work rather than generated text alone. Time spent correcting a spreadsheet formula or repairing a patch belongs in the cost comparison. For a coding assistant, record failed tool calls, review findings and whether the change passes the project's existing checks.

Anthropic says integrations using thinking off must migrate to between_tools. Follow the migration guide linked from the announcement. Our recommendation is to evaluate saved conversations and tool responses as well as new prompts, so an integration change does not quietly break a workflow that previously worked.

If your application relies on a particular model for each response, inspect the provider's documented fallback behaviour and keep that distinction visible in evaluation records. Our recommendation is to review exceptional requests separately from ordinary work. Otherwise, a small aggregate success rate can hide a costly failure in a critical workflow.

A useful rollout begins with one bounded workflow and a previous-model comparison. Keep prompts, tool permissions and input documents consistent. Set a quality threshold before looking at the results, then widen deployment only if the newer configuration meets it. Higher reasoning effort deserves a separate comparison because it can change both latency and cost.