ModelRefs / Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs Claude Sonnet 4 — Benchmarks, Pricing…

Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs Claude Sonnet 4 — Benchmarks, Pricing…

Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs Claude Sonnet 4: side-by-side benchmarks, pricing, context windows, coding ability and deployment. Pick the right model for your stack.

Overview

Claude 3.5 Sonnet: Claude 3.5 Sonnet is Anthropic's mid-2024 balanced model that set a new standard for agentic coding tasks, achieving top results on SWE-Bench Verified and introducing computer-use capabilities. It remains the most widely adopted Claude model for production coding workflows.

Claude Sonnet 4: Claude Sonnet 4 is Anthropic's May 2025 hybrid-reasoning model for coding, visual reasoning, tool use, and agent workflows. The dated claude-sonnet-4-20250514 snapshot was retired on Anthropic-operated platforms on June 15, 2026 and is retained as a historical evaluation and migration reference.

Context window: Claude 3.5 Sonnet accepts up to 200,000 tokens, Claude Sonnet 4 up to 200,000. Confirm the limit for your specific deployment channel before relying on it.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs Claude Sonnet 4 at a glance

AttributeClaude 3.5 SonnetClaude Sonnet 4
ProviderAnthropicAnthropic
Released2024-06-202025-05-22
Context window200,000 tokens200,000 tokens
Input price$3/M tokens$3/M tokens
Output price$15/M tokens$15/M tokens
LicenceProprietaryProprietary
Self-hostableNo, hosted onlyNo, hosted only
Modalitiestext, visiontext, vision

Benchmarks reported for both

BenchmarkClaude 3.5 SonnetClaude Sonnet 4Reported
swe-bench4972.72025-01-06 / 2025-05-22

Scores are as published by their cited sources on the dates shown. Different runs use different harnesses, prompts, and dates, so treat these as directional evidence rather than a head-to-head result.

Where they differ most

  • Agentic: Claude 3.5 Sonnet 49%, Claude Sonnet 4 61%. Claude Sonnet 4 leads on this dimension.
  • Coding: Claude 3.5 Sonnet 49%, Claude Sonnet 4 57%. Claude Sonnet 4 leads on this dimension.
  • Cost Efficiency: Claude 3.5 Sonnet 37%, Claude Sonnet 4 37%. Both score the same on this dimension.

Capability scores are ModelRefs' own derived signals, not vendor claims or benchmark results. Validate against your own workload before relying on them.

Continue your research

Use these connected ModelRefs sections to compare alternatives, inspect implementation paths, and review the evidence and governance boundaries relevant to Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs Claude Sonnet 4 — Benchmarks, Pricing….

Frequently asked questions

Which is better, Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Claude Sonnet 4?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Claude Sonnet 4 target different workloads — see the benchmark and pricing tables for a side-by-side answer.

Is Claude 3.5 Sonnet cheaper than Claude Sonnet 4?

Compare $0.00300 vs $0.00300 on this page.