ModelRefs / Claude 3 Haiku vs Claude 3.5 Sonnet
Claude 3 Haiku vs Claude 3.5 Sonnet
Claude 3 Haiku vs Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 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, the release that introduced computer use and anchored Anthropic's agentic-coding positioning for its generation across a 200,000-token context window. It is now retired: Anthropic deprecated both the claude-3-5-sonnet-20240620 and claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022 snapshots on 13 August 2025 and retired them on 28 October 2025 on Anthropic-operated platforms, naming Claude Sonnet 5.5 as the replacement.
Claude 3 Haiku: Claude 3 Haiku is the speed-and-cost tier of Anthropic's original Claude 3 family, built for high-volume work such as customer support, document triage and many small tasks in parallel, with image input across a 200,000-token context window. Anthropic measured it at 21,000 tokens per second for prompts under 32,000 tokens. The claude-3-haiku-20240307 snapshot was deprecated on 19 February 2026 and retired on Anthropic-operated platforms on 20 April 2026, with Claude Haiku 4.5 as the replacement.
Context window: Claude 3.5 Sonnet accepts up to 200,000 tokens, Claude 3 Haiku up to 200,000. Confirm the limit for your specific deployment channel before relying on it.
Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs Claude 3 Haiku at a glance
| Attribute | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Claude 3 Haiku |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Released | 2024-06-20 | 2024-03-13 |
| Context window | 200,000 tokens | 200,000 tokens |
| Input price | $3/M tokens | $0.25/M tokens |
| Output price | $15/M tokens | $1.25/M tokens |
| Licence | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Self-hostable | No, hosted only | No, hosted only |
| Modalities | text, vision | text, vision |
Where they differ most
- Cost Efficiency: Claude 3.5 Sonnet 37%, Claude 3 Haiku 83%. Claude 3 Haiku leads 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 Haiku vs Claude 3.5 Sonnet.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, Claude 3 Haiku or Claude 3.5 Sonnet?
Claude 3 Haiku and Claude 3.5 Sonnet target different workloads — see the benchmark and pricing tables for a side-by-side answer.
Is Claude 3 Haiku cheaper than Claude 3.5 Sonnet?
Compare $0.00025 vs $0.00300 on this page.