Anthropic launches Claude Sonnet 5, saying it nears Opus 4.8 performance at lower prices and is substantially better than Sonnet 4.6 for agentic work
THE SO WHAT
Near-Opus 4.8 performance at Sonnet pricing, tuned for planning and tool use, compresses the premium you pay for top-tier models in agent workflows. If you’ve been reserving your heaviest agents for only the most valuable tasks, this is the moment to re-benchmark and see which can drop to a cheaper-but-capable tier without losing reliability.
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