Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) logo
Anthropic
•

Proprietary model

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Released February 2026

Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) Intelligence, Performance & Price Analysis

API Provider Benchmarks

Model summary

IntelligenceUpdated

47
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
4 out of 4 units for Intelligence.

Speed

57.6
Output tokens per second
2 out of 4 units for Speed.

Price

Input
$3.00
per 1M tokens
Output
$15.00
per 1M tokens
3 out of 4 units for Price.

Cache Price

Write
$3.75
per 1M tokens
Hit
$0.30
per 1M tokens
3 out of 4 units for Cache Price.

Verbosity

200M
Output tokens from Intelligence Index
4 out of 4 units for Verbosity.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) is amongst the leading models in intelligence, but somewhat expensive when comparing to other models of similar price. It's also slower than average and very verbose. The model supports text and image input, outputs text, and has a 1m tokens context window.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) scores 47 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, placing it well above average among comparable models (averaging 29). When evaluating the Intelligence Index, it generated 200M tokens, which is very verbose in comparison to the average of 100M.

Pricing for Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) is $3.00 per 1M input tokens (somewhat expensive, average: $1.55) and $15.00 per 1M output tokens (somewhat expensive, average: $8.05). In total, it cost $3355.85 to evaluate Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) on the Intelligence Index.

At 58 tokens per second, Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) is slower than average (72).

ReasoningYes

This page shows the reasoning version of this model.

A non-reasoning variant may also exist.

Input modality

Supports: text, image

Output modality

Supports: text

Context window1m
~1500 A4 pages of size 12 Arial font

Metrics are compared against models of the same class:

  • Non-reasoning models → compared only with other non-reasoning models
  • Reasoning models → compared across both reasoning and non-reasoning
  • Open weights models → compared only with other open weights models of the same size class:
    • Tiny: ≤4B parameters
    • Small: 4B–40B parameters
    • Medium: 40B–150B parameters
    • Large: >150B parameters
  • Proprietary models → compared across proprietary and open weights models of the same price range, using a blended 3:1 input/output price ratio:
    • <$0.15 per 1M tokens
    • $0.15–$1 per 1M tokens
    • >$1 per 1M tokens

Highlights

Updated

Intelligence

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index · Higher is better
Not currently available

Speed

Output tokens per second · Higher is better
New

Cost per Task

Weighted average cost (USD) per Intelligence Index task · Lower is better
Not currently available

IntelligenceUpdated

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.1 incorporates 9 evaluations: GDPval-AA v2, 𝜏³-Banking, Terminal-Bench v2.1, SciCode, Humanity's Last Exam, GPQA Diamond, CritPt, AA-Omniscience, AA-LCR
Not currently available
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.1 includes: GDPval-AA v2, 𝜏³-Banking, Terminal-Bench v2.1, SciCode, Humanity's Last Exam, GPQA Diamond, CritPt, AA-Omniscience, AA-LCR. See Intelligence Index methodology for further details, including a breakdown of each evaluation and how we run them.

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index by Open Weights / Proprietary

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.1 incorporates 9 evaluations: GDPval-AA v2, 𝜏³-Banking, Terminal-Bench v2.1, SciCode, Humanity's Last Exam, GPQA Diamond, CritPt, AA-Omniscience, AA-LCR
Not currently available
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.1 includes: GDPval-AA v2, 𝜏³-Banking, Terminal-Bench v2.1, SciCode, Humanity's Last Exam, GPQA Diamond, CritPt, AA-Omniscience, AA-LCR. See Intelligence Index methodology for further details, including a breakdown of each evaluation and how we run them.

Indicates whether the model weights are available. Models are labelled as 'Commercial Use Restricted' if the weights are available but commercial use is limited (typically requires obtaining a paid license).

Intelligence Evaluations

Intelligence evaluations measured independently by Artificial Analysis · Higher is better
GDPval-AA v2Updated

Agentic real-world work tasks, (Elo-500)/2000

𝜏³-BankingNew

Agentic tool use

Terminal-Bench v2.1New

Agentic coding & terminal use

SciCode

Coding

Humanity's Last Exam

Reasoning & knowledge

GPQA Diamond

Scientific reasoning

CritPt

Physics reasoning

AA-Omniscience Accuracy

Knowledge

AA-Omniscience Non-Hallucination Rate

1 - hallucination rate

AA-LCR

Long context reasoning

IFBench

Instruction following

APEX-Agents-AA

Long-horizon agentic tasks

ITBench-AA

Kubernetes incident root-cause analysis

MMMU-Pro

Visual reasoning

Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon.

While model intelligence generally translates across use cases, specific evaluations may be more relevant for certain use cases.

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.1 includes: GDPval-AA v2, 𝜏³-Banking, Terminal-Bench v2.1, SciCode, Humanity's Last Exam, GPQA Diamond, CritPt, AA-Omniscience, AA-LCR. See Intelligence Index methodology for further details, including a breakdown of each evaluation and how we run them.

AA-BriefcaseNew

AA-Briefcase Elo

AA-Briefcase is an agentic knowledge work benchmark developed by Artificial Analysis. AA-Briefcase Elo is a combined metric that aggregates rubric pass rate, analytical quality Elo and presentation Elo · Higher is better
Not currently available
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

AA-Briefcase Elo is a combined metric that aggregates analytical quality Elo, presentation Elo, and rubric pass rate, with rubric performance converted into Elo via synthetic head-to-head matches. Elo and 95% confidence interval bounds are clamped at 0.

Openness

Artificial Analysis Openness Index: Score

Openness Index assesses model openness on a 0 to 100 normalized scale (higher is more open)
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Intelligence Index Comparisons

Intelligence vs. Cost per Intelligence Index Task

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index · Weighted average cost (USD) per Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index task
Most attractive quadrant
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon.

Weighted average cost per Intelligence Index task. Each evaluation’s cost is calculated from input, cache hit, cache write, reasoning, and answer token prices, divided by task count, and weighted by its Intelligence Index weight.

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.1 includes: GDPval-AA v2, 𝜏³-Banking, Terminal-Bench v2.1, SciCode, Humanity's Last Exam, GPQA Diamond, CritPt, AA-Omniscience, AA-LCR. See Intelligence Index methodology for further details, including a breakdown of each evaluation and how we run them.

Token UseUpdated

Output Tokens per Intelligence Index Task

Weighted average number of output tokens used to run one task in the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

The number of tokens required per Intelligence Index task. This is calculated by multiplying the output tokens per eval by the relative weights of each benchmark in the Intelligence Index, then dividing by task count (excluding repeats).

Price and CostUpdated

Cost per Intelligence Index Task

Weighted average cost (USD) per Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index task, segmented by token type. Lower is better
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Weighted average cost per Intelligence Index task. Each evaluation’s cost is calculated from input, cache hit, cache write, reasoning, and answer token prices, divided by task count, and weighted by its Intelligence Index weight.

Cost to Run Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index

Cost (USD) to run all evaluations in the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

The cost to run the evaluations in the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, calculated using the model's input, cache hit, cache write, reasoning, and answer token prices and the number of tokens used across evaluations (excluding repeats).

Pricing: Cache Hit, Input, and Output

Price (USD per M Tokens)
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Price per token for cached prompts (previously processed), typically offering a significant discount compared to regular input price, represented as USD per million tokens. The values shown here are the cache hit price; cache write and cache storage are billed separately and vary by provider — see "Cache pricing by provider" for detail.

Price per token included in the request/message sent to the API, represented as USD per million Tokens.

The blended cache price shown here uses cache hit price only. Other caching costs differ by provider:

  • Anthropic: charges a separate cache write fee, with different rates for 5-minute and 1-hour TTLs (1-hour TTL is more expensive).
  • Google (Vertex/Gemini): charges a per-hour cache storage fee in addition to cache hit pricing. Some providers also use tiered pricing for prompts above 200K tokens.
  • OpenAI, DeepSeek, others: typically charge only cache hit pricing with no write or storage fee.

See Prompt Caching for the full breakdown.

Price per token generated by the model (received from the API), represented as USD per million Tokens.

Figures represent performance of the model's first-party API (e.g. OpenAI for o1) or the median across providers where a first-party API is not available (e.g. Meta's Llama models).

Context Window

Context Window

Context window: tokens limit · Higher is better
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Larger context windows are relevant to RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) LLM workflows which typically involve reasoning and information retrieval of large amounts of data.

Maximum number of combined input & output tokens. Output tokens commonly have a significantly lower limit (varied by model).

SpeedUpdated

Measured by Output Speed (tokens per second)

Output Speed

Output tokens per second · Higher is better
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Tokens per second received while the model is generating tokens (ie. after first chunk has been received from the API for models which support streaming).

Figures represent performance of the model's first-party API (e.g. OpenAI for o1) or the median across providers where a first-party API is not available (e.g. Meta's Llama models).

Time per Intelligence Index Task

Weighted average wall clock time (minutes) per task; excludes TTFT and execution time · Lower is better
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

The weighted average time (seconds) per Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index task. This is calculated by dividing output tokens per task by output speed, weighted by the relative weights of each benchmark in the Intelligence Index.

Latency

Measured by Time (seconds) to First Token

Latency: Time To First Answer Token

Seconds to first answer token received · Accounts for reasoning model 'thinking' time
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Time to first answer token received, in seconds, after API request sent. For reasoning models, this includes the 'thinking' time of the model before providing an answer. For models which do not support streaming, this represents time to receive the completion.

End-to-End Response Time

Seconds to output 500 tokens, calculated based on time to first token, 'thinking' time for reasoning models, and output speed

End-to-End Response Time

Seconds to output 500 tokens, including reasoning model 'thinking' time · Lower is better
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Seconds to receive a 500 token response. Key components:

  • Input time: Time to receive the first response token
  • Thinking time (only for reasoning models): Time reasoning models spend outputting tokens to reason prior to providing an answer. Amount of tokens based on the average reasoning tokens across a diverse set of 60 prompts (methodology details).
  • Answer time: Time to generate 500 output tokens, based on output speed

Figures represent performance of the model's first-party API (e.g. OpenAI for o1) or the median across providers where a first-party API is not available (e.g. Meta's Llama models).

Model Size (Open Weights Models Only)

Model Size: Total and Active Parameters

Comparison between total model parameters and parameters active during inference
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

The total number of trainable weights and biases in the model, expressed in billions. These parameters are learned during training and determine the model's ability to process and generate responses.

The number of parameters actually executed during each inference forward pass, expressed in billions. For Mixture of Experts (MoE) models, a routing mechanism selects a subset of experts per token, resulting in fewer active than total parameters. Dense models use all parameters, so active equals total.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)

Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) was released on February 17, 2026.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) was created by Anthropic.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) scores 47 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, placing it well above average among other reasoning models in a similar price tier (median: 29).

Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) generates output at 57.6 tokens per second (based on Anthropic's API), which is below average compared to other reasoning models in a similar price tier (median: 72.5 t/s).

Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) has a time to first token (TTFT) of 125.68s (based on Anthropic's API), which is at the higher end compared to other reasoning models in a similar price tier (median: 2.73s).

Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) costs $3.00 per 1M input tokens (somewhat higher than average, median: $1.55) and $15.00 per 1M output tokens (somewhat higher than average, median: $8.05), based on Anthropic's API.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) costs $3.00 per 1M input tokens and $15.00 per 1M output tokens (based on Anthropic's API). For a blended rate (7:2:1 cache hit/input/output ratio), this is $2.31 per 1M tokens. Pricing may vary by provider. Compare provider pricing

When evaluated on the Intelligence Index, Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) generated 200M output tokens, which is at the higher end compared to other reasoning models in a similar price tier (median: 100M).

Yes, Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) is a reasoning model. It uses extended thinking or chain-of-thought reasoning to work through complex problems before providing an answer.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) supports text and image input.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) supports text output.

Yes, Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) supports image input and can analyze, describe, and answer questions about images.

Yes, Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) is multimodal. It can process text and image input and generate text output.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) has a context window of 1.0M tokens. This determines how much text and conversation history the model can process in a single request.

No, Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) is proprietary. The model weights are not publicly available.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) is a proprietary model and Anthropic has not disclosed the model size or parameter count.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) achieves a score of 47 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index. This composite benchmark evaluates models across reasoning, knowledge, mathematics, and coding.

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