Claude Opus 4.6 API Pricing
Anthropic · context window 1M · prices updated 2026-09-15
Where Claude Opus 4.6 sits on price
At $25.00 per million output tokens, Claude Opus 4.6 is a frontier tier model — 12.0× the median output price of $2.08, which puts it in the most expensive 10% of everything we track. It sits 21th cheapest of the 27 Anthropic models we track. Output costs 5.0× input, the usual spread — trim both, starting with the answer length.
Cached input is 90% cheaper. On an input-heavy workload you need roughly a 28% cache-hit rate to take 25% off the input line — reachable for chatbots and agents that resend the same system prompt and history.
What real workloads cost on Claude Opus 4.6
These three workloads are the ones teams actually run on a frontier-priced model — a $25.00/1M model is not bought for the same job as one ten times the price.
| Workload | Per request | Per month |
|---|---|---|
| Small app — 1K requests/day (500 in / 150 out) The baseline most side projects actually run at. | $0.0063 | $188 |
| Coding agent — 300 sessions/day (60K in / 12K out) Multi-step loops re-read the same files; caching matters more than raw price. | $0.6 | $5400 |
| Support chatbot — 500 conversations/day (5K in / 1.4K out) Conversation history re-sent each turn — the classic prompt-caching win. | $0.06 | $900 |
Model your exact traffic in the API cost calculator — it preloads Claude Opus 4.6 with caching and batch options.
Claude Opus 4.6 price history
Claude Opus 4.6's price has not moved since we began tracking it on Aug 2, 2026 — 44 days of stability in a market where 78 of the 334 models we track have repriced over the same period. Anthropic's lineup has held steady across the board.
Change-points from our daily price snapshots (tracking since Aug 2, 2026; intraday moves between snapshots are not captured).
Claude Opus 4.6 vs GPT-6 Astra (batch)
The closest-priced alternative from another vendor is GPT-6 Astra (batch) (OpenAI) — priced within a rounding error on output, with identical input pricing. When two models land this close on price, the decision is quality on your own workload, not the price sheet: run 50 real requests through both and compare.
See GPT-6 Astra (batch) pricing →Cheaper alternatives
More Anthropic models
Frequently asked questions
› How much does the Claude Opus 4.6 API cost?
Claude Opus 4.6 costs $5.00 per million input tokens and $25.00 per million output tokens, with cached input at $0.5 per million (90% cheaper). That works out to roughly 40,000 output tokens per dollar.
› What does the small app workload cost on Claude Opus 4.6?
Small app — 1K requests/day (500 in / 150 out) costs about $0.0063 per request and $188 per month on Claude Opus 4.6. The baseline most side projects actually run at.
› What does it cost to fill Claude Opus 4.6's 1M context window?
Sending 1M of input in a single request costs $5.00 at $5.00 per million tokens — before any output. With prompt caching that same fill drops to about $0.5 on repeat requests. This is why large context windows are cheap to advertise and expensive to actually use.
› Is Claude Opus 4.6 worth the price?
Claude Opus 4.6 is priced in the top bracket, at $25.00 per million output tokens. It only pays off where an error is expensive — production code, legal and medical drafting, agents that take real actions. For anything routine, Claude Sonnet 4.6 at $15.00 does the same job for a fraction of the bill.