Claude Models: All 21 Models Compared

21 models. That's how many Claude versions Anthropic has released since March 2023. And keeping track of which model does what, which ones are still active, and what they cost? Not exactly straightforward.

I've used every generation of Claude since version 1.0, from the early 9K context window days to the current 200K (and 1M in beta) models. The progress has been remarkable.

In this article, I'll break down all 21 Claude models, compare their features, pricing, and availability, and give you a clear recommendation for which one to pick.

What Are Claude Models?

Claude models are the AI models behind Anthropic's chatbot. What sets them apart from GPT or Gemini?

A few things:

• Constitutional AI: Claude is trained with a set of principles that ensure responses are helpful, harmless, and honest. More details in Anthropic's Constitutional AI research.
• Large Context Windows: Modern Claude models can process up to 200,000 tokens (equivalent to about 100,000 English words)
• Multimodal Capabilities: From Claude 3 onwards, models can understand and analyze both text and images.
• Hybrid Reasoning: The latest models offer both fast responses and deeper "thinking" for complex problems.

Anthropic has deliberately chosen a different strategy than OpenAI: instead of focusing on maximum performance, safety and control of the AI are the priority.

Comparison of All Claude Models

Here is a detailed overview of all Claude models with their key properties:

Claude 4.6 Opus is the current flagship model from Anthropic and the most intelligent Claude model available. It builds on the lineage of Opus models with further improvements in reasoning, coding, and instruction following.

Key Features:

• Highest intelligence of any Claude model to date
• Enhanced reasoning capabilities with improved Hybrid-Reasoning
• 200,000 token context window with up to 64,000 output tokens
• Multimodal capabilities: Processes text, images, and documents
• Ideal for complex research, analysis, and advanced coding tasks

Claude 4.6 Sonnet is the current flagship Sonnet model from Anthropic, continuing the tradition of offering excellent performance at a balanced price point. It replaces Claude 4.5 Sonnet as the recommended model for most professional applications.

Key Features:

• Current flagship Sonnet with enhanced reasoning and coding capabilities
• Improved instruction following compared to Claude 4.5 Sonnet
• 200,000 token context window with up to 64,000 output tokens
• Multimodal capabilities: Processes text, images, and documents
• Best balance of performance and cost for most use cases

Claude 4.5 Haiku is the latest Haiku model and marks a significant advancement in the cost-effective, fast AI category. It's the first Haiku model in version 4.5 and offers an impressive combination of speed, low cost, and surprisingly high performance.

Key Features:

• Significantly improved performance: Surpasses Claude 3.5 Haiku in all benchmarks at similar costs
• Fastest response times: Optimized for high-throughput applications with minimal latency
• Enhanced coding capabilities: Strong performance on programming tasks for a Haiku model
• 200,000 token context window with up to 64,000 output tokens
• Multimodal capabilities: Processes text, images, and documents
• Knowledge Cutoff: January 2025, Training Data through July 2025
• API Pricing: $1 per 1 million input tokens, $5 per 1 million output tokens
• Model String: claude-haiku-4-5-20251015
• Safety Level: ASL-2 (AI Safety Level 2 Standard)

What makes Claude 4.5 Haiku special?

Claude 4.5 Haiku fills an important gap in Anthropic's portfolio: It offers significantly higher performance than its predecessor Claude 3.5 Haiku while maintaining the speed and low costs that Haiku models are known for. This makes it the perfect choice for applications requiring thousands or millions of API calls per day.

Particularly impressive is the coding performance: While earlier Haiku models were primarily intended for simple text tasks, Claude 4.5 Haiku can deliver surprisingly good results even on medium to complex programming tasks, at a fraction of the cost of Sonnet or Opus models.

Ideal Use Cases:

• Chatbots and customer service: Fast, precise responses at low cost
• Content moderation: High-throughput analysis of user-generated content
• Simple automation: Code snippets, formatting, data extraction
• Real-time applications: Where minimal latency is critical
• Batch processing: Processing large volumes of documents or text

Availability: Claude 4.5 Haiku is available via the Claude API, Claude.ai Web Interface, Claude iOS and Android Apps, Amazon Bedrock, and Google Cloud Vertex AI.

Claude 4.5 Sonnet (September 2025) was a significant breakthrough for Anthropic. It combines world-class coding performance with the attractive price of the Sonnet series: For the first time, a Sonnet model surpassed the Opus variants in the most important benchmarks. It has since been succeeded by Claude 4.6 Sonnet (February 2026).

Key Features:

• State-of-the-art coding performance: Leading in SWE-bench Verified Benchmark, surpasses even Claude 4.1 Opus
• Impressive focus ability: Can stay focused for 30+ hours on complex, multi-step tasks
• OSWorld leadership: 61.4% performance in OSWorld benchmark (vs. 42.2% for Claude 4 Sonnet four months earlier)
• 200,000 token context window with up to 64,000 output tokens
• Multimodal capabilities: Processes text, images, and documents
• Knowledge Cutoff: January 2025, Training Data through July 2025
• API Pricing: $3 per 1 million input tokens, $15 per 1 million output tokens
• Model String: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929
• Safety Level: ASL-3 (AI Safety Level 3 Standard)

What makes Claude 4.5 Sonnet special?

Claude 4.5 Sonnet marks a paradigm shift in Anthropic's model strategy. While previously Opus models offered the absolute peak performance, Anthropic has managed to develop a model with Claude 4.5 Sonnet that surpasses the Opus variants in most areas at one-fifth of the cost.

The most remarkable capability is "Extended Focus": Claude 4.5 Sonnet can work focused for over 30 hours on complex development tasks without losing quality or coherence. This makes it ideal for large refactoring projects, complex system architectures, and multi-step debugging sessions.

Claude 4.1 Opus is the newest and most advanced Opus model from Anthropic. It builds on the Claude 4 family, which represented a quantum leap in AI development. These Hybrid-Reasoning models can switch between two modes: lightning-fast responses for simple questions and extensive "thinking" for complex problems.

Key Features:

• Improved reasoning capabilities compared to Claude 4 Opus
• World's best coding assistant with 92% success rate in SWE-bench verified
• Extended Hybrid-Reasoning functions with even deeper "thinking"
• Significantly reduced hallucination rate (under 2% in benchmarks)
• API Pricing: $15 per 1 million input tokens, $75 per 1 million output tokens
• 200,000 token context window
• Improved multimodal capabilities, especially for technical diagrams

Claude 4 Opus was the original flagship model of the Claude 4 family, which introduced Hybrid-Reasoning technology.

Key Features:

• Previous best coding assistant with 72.5% success rate in SWE-bench (now surpassed by 4.1 Opus)
• Hybrid-Reasoning: Users can choose between fast and thoughtful responses
• Excellent for complex scientific, mathematical, and programming tasks
• API Pricing: $15 per 1 million input tokens, $75 per 1 million output tokens
• 200,000 token context window
• Multimodal capabilities (text, images, documents)

Claude 4 Sonnet is the balanced version of the Claude 4 family and offers the best balance between performance and cost for most applications.

Key Features:

• Also equipped with Hybrid-Reasoning capabilities
• Better price-performance ratio than Opus
• API Pricing: $3 per 1 million input tokens, $15 per 1 million output tokens
• Ideal for most professional applications
• Same technical foundation as Opus
• 200,000 token context window

Claude 3.7 Sonnet was the first model to introduce Anthropic's new Hybrid-Reasoning technology. It allows users to switch between fast responses and an "extended thinking mode."

Key Features:

• First Claude with controllable thinking time
• Toggle between "Fast" and "Think" mode
• Improved performance on complex reasoning tasks
• 200,000 token context window
• Multimodal input (text and images)
• Test model for later Claude 4 development

Claude 3.5 Haiku is the fastest and most cost-effective model in the Claude 3.5 series, which significantly improved upon the Claude 3 family foundations.

Key Features:

• Fastest and most cost-effective model in the series
• Optimized for high throughput rates
• Impressive quality despite speed
• Perfect for chatbots and simple automation
• Multimodal capabilities at low cost
• 200,000 token context window
• API Pricing: $0.80 per 1 million input tokens, $4 per 1 million output tokens

Claude 3.5 Sonnet was the first model in the improved 3.5 series and offered better performance at similar costs to Claude 3.

Key Features:

• Surpasses Claude 3 Opus in many benchmarks
• Significantly cheaper than Opus with comparable performance
• Improved coding capabilities and visual understanding
• Better workflow integration and tool use
• 200,000 token context window
• Ideal for productive applications
• API Pricing: $3 per 1 million input tokens, $15 per 1 million output tokens

Claude 3 Opus was the most powerful model in the Claude 3 family, which marked a turning point: for the first time, Claude models could process both text and images.

Key Features:

• The most powerful model in the series
• First Claude version with true multimodality
• Excellent for complex analysis and reasoning tasks
• 200,000 token context window
• Discontinued on June 30, 2025 (Retirement on January 5, 2026)

Claude 3 Sonnet was the balanced model in the Claude 3 family, which introduced the Japanese poetry-inspired naming convention.

Key Features:

• Balanced model between performance and cost
• Good all-round capabilities for most applications
• Multimodal capabilities (text and images)
• 200,000 token context window
• Was replaced by Claude 3.5 Sonnet on July 21, 2025

Claude 3 Haiku was the fastest and cheapest model in the Claude 3 family.

Key Features:

• Fastest and cheapest model in the Claude 3 series
• First multimodal Claude version for high-throughput applications
• Still available and widely used
• 200,000 token context window
• Multimodal capabilities (text and images)
• API Pricing: $0.25 per 1 million input tokens, $1.25 per 1 million output tokens

Claude 2.1 was the improved version of Claude 2, the first publicly available Claude.

Key Features:

• 200,000 token context window (twice as large as Claude 2.0)
• Reduced hallucinations compared to Claude 2.0
• Improved accuracy for long documents
• Discontinued

Claude 2.0 was the first publicly available Claude and brought significant improvements over the first generation.

Key Features:

• 100,000 token context window
• Improved coding capabilities
• Better mathematical reasoning
• Available via API and Claude.ai website
• Discontinued

Claude 1.3 was the final version of the first Claude generation, laying the foundation for Anthropic's approach to AI safety.

Key Features:

• Improved safety features through Constitutional AI
• Better handling of complex instructions
• Only available via API
• Discontinued

Claude 1.2 was an intermediate version of the first Claude generation.

Key Features:

• Incremental improvements over Claude 1.0
• Better text understanding
• Discontinued

Claude 1.0 was the very first model from Anthropic and laid the foundation for all later developments.

Key Features:

• First model with Constitutional AI training
• 9,000 token context window
• Focus on safety and helpfulness
• Foundation for all later developments
• Discontinued

Which Claude Model Should You Choose?

The choice of the right Claude model depends on your specific requirements:

For Developers and Programmers

Claude 4.6 Sonnet (February 2026) is the current recommended model for developers, building on the strong coding foundations of Claude 4.5 Sonnet with further improvements in reasoning and instruction following.

Alternative for special requirements: Claude 4.6 Opus is the most capable model for extremely complex architectures and deep research tasks where maximum intelligence and Hybrid-Reasoning with extended thinking time add value.

For Businesses and Professional Applications

Claude 4 Sonnet offers the best price-performance ratio for most business applications. It combines high intelligence with moderate costs and is perfect for customer service, content creation, and data analysis.

For High-Volume Applications

Claude 4.5 Haiku (October 2025) is the newest and best Haiku model for chatbots, automated responses, and other applications that need fast, cost-effective responses with high quality. It offers significantly better performance than Claude 3.5 Haiku at comparable costs ($1/$5 vs. $0.80/$4 per million tokens).

Price Comparison of All Claude Models

The following table shows a detailed overview of all Claude prices (all figures in $ per million tokens). All active models offer 50% discount when using the Batch API.

Important notes on the price table:

• All prices are in USD per million tokens
• Batch API usage provides 50% discount on all active models
• Claude 4.5 Sonnet has tiered pricing: standard rates for first 200K tokens, higher rates beyond
• Prompt caching can reduce costs by up to 90% for repeated content
• Extended thinking tokens in Opus/Sonnet 4+ models are billed at the regular output rate

Conclusion

For most users, Claude 4.6 Sonnet (February 2026) is the right choice. It offers world-class performance at a balanced price point, building on the strong coding foundations of Claude 4.5 Sonnet with further improvements in reasoning and instruction following.

For high-volume, cost-sensitive applications, Claude 4.5 Haiku offers the best balance of speed, quality, and price. And for specialized tasks requiring the deepest reasoning, Claude 4.6 Opus is the most capable model available.

The good news: all modern Claude models are excellent. You can't really go wrong. Just pick the one that fits your budget and use case.