Anthropic Claude API API pricing: plans, free tier and what to watch for

Anthropic Claude API API pricing at a glance: Claude Opus 4.8 $5 / $25 per 1M tokens, Claude Sonnet 4.6 $3 / $15 per 1M tokens, Claude Haiku 4.5 $1 / $5 per 1M tokens, Claude Fable 5 $10 / $50 per 1M tokens

The short answer

Anthropic Claude API is billed per token. It has no free tier (Trial credits on signup (no ongoing API free tier)). The paid plans we list start at $5 / $25 per 1M tokens (Claude Opus 4.8).

Plans and prices

Plan	Price	What it covers
Claude Opus 4.8	$5 / $25 per 1M tokens	Flagship model, input/output; 1M-token context with no long-context surcharge. Fast Mode available at $10/$50.
Claude Sonnet 4.6	$3 / $15 per 1M tokens	Best speed/intelligence balance, input/output; 1M-token context.
Claude Haiku 4.5	$1 / $5 per 1M tokens	Fastest, most cost-effective tier, input/output; 200K context.
Claude Fable 5	$10 / $50 per 1M tokens	Most capable widely released model for the most demanding reasoning/agentic work; 1M context.
Batch API	50% off standard rates	Asynchronous processing; up to 100K requests or 256MB per batch, most complete within 1 hour.
Prompt caching	~0.1x read / 1.25x write (5m)	Cached input served at ~10% of base price; up to ~90% savings on repeated prefixes.

How Anthropic Claude API bills you

The pricing model is per token. Claude's API pairs strong agentic/coding models with first-class tool-use, MCP, and prompt-caching support. Best suited to: frontier reasoning and agentic coding.

What to watch for on the bill

Rate-limit and quota tiers are opaque, limits are not always clearly stated, generating developer frustration
Premium pricing at the Opus/Fable tier is high versus commodity LLM APIs
Some features are gated by model tier or unavailable on certain third-party platforms (e.g. no Batches/web search on Bedrock)

The pricing page we read

Anthropic Claude API pricing page, captured for reference — Capture of platform.claude.com. Captured from Germany, so some vendors show local prices or currency. Listed prices are verified Jun 27, 2026. The live page may differ.

Source: https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing. Prices change, so confirm there before you commit.

Compare Anthropic Claude API with alternatives

Other llm apis: OpenAI API, Google Gemini API, Mistral La Plateforme, xAI Grok API, Groq.

Looking at quality rather than price? See the Anthropic Claude API score on APIbenchmarks. Full entry: Anthropic Claude API pricing.