Claude Models Compared (2026)

Side-by-side comparison of all three Claude tiers in 2026: capability, latency, context window, and pricing.

One table covering the practical differences between the three Claude tiers in 2026.

	Opus 4.7	Sonnet 4.6	Haiku 4.5
Capability tier	Highest	Balanced	Fastest
Input $/M	$15	$3	$1
Output $/M	$75	$15	$5
Context window	200k tokens	200k tokens	200k tokens
Best for	Agentic, multi-step	Default production	Classification, extraction
Latency	Slowest	Medium	Fastest
Extended thinking	Yes	Yes	Limited

The decision tree

Start at Haiku. If quality is acceptable, ship it.
If Haiku fails, try Sonnet. This is where 80% of production workloads land.
Reach for Opus only when the task is multi-step or high-stakes.

Tools to decide

Prompt-Pricing Recommender — paste a prompt, get a tier recommendation.
Cost Calculator — model the bill at each tier.

Frequently asked questions

What is the context window for all Claude models?

All three 2026 Claude tiers — Opus 4.7, Sonnet 4.6, and Haiku 4.5 — share a 200,000-token context window. You pay for every token you send, so long-context workloads benefit most from prompt caching.

Which Claude model should I use as a default?

Start with Claude Sonnet 4.6. It handles the vast majority of production tasks at production quality, costs 5× less than Opus, and supports all major features including extended thinking and prompt caching. Escalate to Opus only when Sonnet demonstrably fails.

Do all Claude models support extended thinking?

Opus 4.7 and Sonnet 4.6 support extended thinking. Haiku 4.5 has limited extended-thinking support. Thinking tokens are billed as output tokens at the model's standard rate.

Free tools

Cost Calculator → Prompt-Pricing Recommender → Diff Summarizer → Skills Browser →

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