Claude Sonnet 5
Claude Sonnet 5
Sonnet 5.5 costs exactly the same and is far stronger. There is little reason to stay.
Updated
The read
Sonnet 5 was the coding workhorse of the summer, and it still applies patches that compile and holds up over long tool-calling chains. Sonnet 5.5 now costs exactly the same per token and scores far higher on the Artificial Analysis index, so the only reason to stay is a pipeline you have tuned carefully and do not want to re-test. Anthropic lists it as a legacy model.
Where it shines
- Reliable tool calling over long chains
- Follows a repository's existing conventions
- Well understood after months of heavy production use
Worth knowing first
- Sonnet 5.5 is far stronger at the same price
- Listed by Anthropic as a legacy model
Index score
82.5
Provisional. This score is read from the product's public capability, not from the one-prompt rebuild the fully reviewed entries went through, so treat it as a placing rather than a verdict.
- Rank
- 33 of 73
- Builds
- LLMs
- Category
- Coding
- Output
- Text, code and tool calls over an API
- Pricing
- Paid only
- Best for
- Existing coding pipelines that are not ready to re-test
Scores are our own editorial judgement, weighted craft 55, speed 10, control 15 and value 20.
Also worth a look
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- 37Step 3.7 FlashStep 3.7 FlashProvisionalAn Apache-licensed vision model built for coding agents, and it routes work rather than brute-forcing it.Coding modelFree tier81.6
