Anthropic makes Sonnet 5 the default at $2/$10, near Opus 4.8 quality
Anthropic made Claude Sonnet 5 the default for free and Pro users, priced at $2 per million input and $10 per million output tokens through August 31, where it edges past Opus 4.8 on knowledge work while trailing on agentic coding (63.2% vs 69.2%). The release confirms that agentic capability is now the baseline at every price tier — the frontier fight has moved from who runs autonomous tasks best to who runs them cheapest and most reliably without human oversight.
Source: techcrunch.com ↗
It can make plans, use tools like browsers and terminals, and run autonomously at a level that, just a few months ago, required larger and more expensive models.
Anthropic
Why this matters
- → Agentic AI now baseline at every price tier; competition shifts to cost and reliability.
- → Sonnet 5 matches Opus quality at lower cost, pressuring entire market pricing.
- → Autonomous task capability democratized across free and paid tiers.
Agentic capability goes mainstream