Claude Sonnet 5 Pricing (2026): API Cost per 1M Tokens in $ and ₹, plus Sonnet 5.5, Opus and Fable

Claude Sonnet 5 costs $2 per 1M input tokens and $10 per 1M output tokens. Its successor, Claude Sonnet 5.5, has exactly the same price. On Velona that is ₹204.53 per 1M input tokens and ₹1,023 per 1M output tokens, paid from a rupee wallet with UPI. Prices are as of 16 October 2026.

This guide gives the price of every current Claude model in dollars and rupees, shows what real requests and real months cost, and helps you pick the cheapest model that does the job.

Claude API pricing for every model (per 1M tokens)

Anthropic bills per million tokens, split into input (what you send) and output (what the model writes back). A token is roughly three quarters of an English word. Velona converts the same list price to rupees at the live exchange rate.

How the Claude models compare on price

Output tokens drive most bills, so this chart compares the output price. The gap between the cheapest and the most expensive Claude model is 100 times.

What one Claude request really costs in rupees

Per million prices are hard to picture. Pick a task below to see what a single request costs on each current model.

Where your rupees go: input or output?

Chat is output heavy. Agents are input heavy, because they resend the code and history on every step. That tells you which lever to pull.

Your monthly Claude bill, three real examples

Which Claude model should you pick?

Start with the cheapest model that can do the job, and move up only when the output is not good enough. This flow covers most cases.

Claude Sonnet 5 vs Sonnet 5.5: is there a price difference?

The token price is identical, so moving from Sonnet 5 to Sonnet 5.5 costs nothing extra. If your app reuses a long system prompt or codebase, the cheaper cache reads on Sonnet 5.5 can lower the bill further. Want the full feature comparison with the older generation? See Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Sonnet 5.

How you pay for Claude from India

Anthropic bills in US dollars and expects an international card. Velona puts a rupee wallet in front of the same models, so the whole flow stays in rupees.

Every model on Velona is priced with one published formula:

To be straight about it: if you already have an international card that works with Anthropic, paying direct in dollars skips the 7% platform fee. Velona is built for developers who do not have that card, hit payment declines, or want to start with ₹10 instead of a dollar minimum and use Claude alongside 300+ other models on one key.

Cheaper alternatives when Sonnet is more than you need

For a coding agent, the cost per step adds up fast. These models cost a fraction of Sonnet 5.5 per step and handle many routine tasks well. Try them on your own prompts before switching.

Call Claude Sonnet from Python in 2 minutes

Velona is OpenAI compatible. Install the OpenAI SDK, point it at Velona, and pick a Claude model ID from the table above.

pip install openai

import os
from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    api_key=os.environ["VELONA_API_KEY"],
    base_url="https://velona.in/v1",
)

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="anthropic/claude-sonnet-5.5",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Explain Python decorators with one example."}],
    max_tokens=500,
)

print(response.choices[0].message.content)
print(response.usage)  # tokens billed for this request

Setting max_tokens caps the expensive part of the request. Every call then shows up in your usage dashboard with its exact rupee cost. A ₹100 top up covers about 140 Sonnet 5.5 chat replies.

Need the full India setup, with key creation and curl examples? Read Claude API in India: price in ₹ and how to pay with UPI.

Frequently asked questions

How we calculated this

Dollar prices are Anthropic's published API list prices as of 14 October 2026. Rupee prices use Velona's formula at a USD to INR rate of 95.10 on 16 October 2026, and match what Velona billed for real Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku 5.5 requests that day. Request sizes are typical examples, not averages. All figures exclude prompt caching and batch discounts. Prices change, so check the Claude Sonnet 5 page for the live rate.