Which model is better: Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Claude 4.5 Sonnet?
Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Claude 4.5 Sonnet match on base input pricing at $3.00/1M tokens ($15.00 vs. $15.00/1M output). For autonomous software engineering, Claude 4.5 Sonnet leads on SWE-bench Verified (75.8% vs. 49.0%), while Claude 4.5 Sonnet edges ahead on GPQA Diamond scientific reasoning (84.2%). In real-time API production, Claude 3.5 Sonnet achieves a faster 310ms TTFT latency (80.0 tokens/sec).
Verified daily via automated API latency tests and official documentation.
Zero-Shot RAG Verified
Verified Performance & Unit Economics Delta (12 Dimensions)
Daily synchronized metrics across token pricing, prompt cache economics, latency, throughput, and 5 capability benchmarks.
Metric / Dimension
Claude 3.5 Sonnet
Claude 4.5 Sonnet
Net Delta / Advantage
Input Cost / 1M Tokens
$3.00
$3.00
Identical Pricing
Output Cost / 1M Tokens
$15.00
$15.00
Identical Output Pricing
Prompt Cache Read / 1M
$0.300
$0.300
Identical Cache Read Pricing
Prompt Cache Write / 1M
$3.75
$3.75
Identical Cache Write Pricing
Context Window (Max Output)
205k (8k out)
205k (64k out)
Equal Context Window
Avg TTFT Response Latency
310ms
380ms
Claude 3.5 Sonnet (70ms faster)
Generation Speed (Throughput)
80 tok/s
84 tok/s
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (+4 tok/s faster)
SWE-bench Verified (Coding)
49%
75.8%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (+26.8% lead)
GPQA Diamond (PhD STEM)
59.4%
84.2%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (+24.8% lead)
MMLU-Pro (Multi-Discipline)
78%
90.4%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (+12.4% lead)
MATH-500 (Quantitative Logic)
78.3%
97.5%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (+19.2% lead)
Inference Value Score (IVR)
46.2 / 100
56.5 / 100
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (+10.3 pts)
Interactive Monthly Token Economics & ROI Forecaster
Model production workloads across prompt, completion, and cached context tokens, or switch models on the fly.
Deploy Claude 3.5 Sonnet when your architecture requires 49.0% SWE-bench coding accuracy, 59.4% GPQA Diamond reasoning, and 204k context at $3.00/1M input ($0.300/1M cached read).
Which is cheaper: Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Claude 4.5 Sonnet?
Both Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Claude 4.5 Sonnet share identical input pricing at $3.00/1M tokens.
Which model has lower TTFT latency and higher tok/s throughput: Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Claude 4.5 Sonnet?
Claude 3.5 Sonnet delivers faster first-token latency at 310ms TTFT (80 tok/s throughput) compared to 380ms TTFT (84 tok/s) for Claude 4.5 Sonnet.
How do Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Claude 4.5 Sonnet compare on SWE-bench coding and GPQA Diamond reasoning?
On SWE-bench Verified software engineering, Claude 3.5 Sonnet scores 49% versus 75.8% for Claude 4.5 Sonnet. On GPQA Diamond graduate-level STEM reasoning, Claude 3.5 Sonnet scores 59.4% versus 84.2% for Claude 4.5 Sonnet (and 78.3% vs 97.5% on MATH-500).
When should you choose Claude 3.5 Sonnet?
Deploy Claude 3.5 Sonnet when your architecture requires 49.0% SWE-bench coding accuracy, 59.4% GPQA Diamond reasoning, and 204k context at $3.00/1M input ($0.300/1M cached read).
When should you choose Claude 4.5 Sonnet?
Select Claude 4.5 Sonnet for workloads prioritizing 380ms TTFT latency, 84.0 tokens/sec throughput, and $3.00/1M input pricing ($0.300/1M cached read).
