Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 5.5, an update to its mid-tier model built for everyday coding and writing work, according to the company's announcement covered by TechCrunch. The model runs more than 30% faster and costs up to 30% less than Sonnet 5 for most work while keeping the same price per token, according to Simon Willison, who reviewed the release.
Sonnet 5.5 now powers the free tier of Claude.ai, Willison reported, which he said makes the free version of Claude more capable on coding tasks than OpenAI's free ChatGPT tier. On complex coding and 3D animation tasks, Willison found Sonnet 5.5 performed comparably to Anthropic's larger Opus 5.5 model.
The release adds cybersecurity safeguards previously reserved for Opus-tier models, making Sonnet 5.5 the first Sonnet model to carry them, TechCrunch reported. Anthropic said a new version of its smallest model, Haiku, is coming in the following weeks, without giving a date.
For developers choosing between Anthropic's tiers, the practical change is cost: a model priced and marketed as the cheap option now handles agentic coding work that used to require the expensive one.