API Need50% off
Uptime
Total Context
1M
Max Output
128K
Input
$1.5/ 1M
Output
$7.5/ 1M
Cache Read
$0.15/ 1M
Cache Write
$1.875/ 1M
AAnthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 API
anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6
Claude Sonnet 4.6 API is a mid-priced Anthropic release with a 1M context and text, image, and file inputs. It is positioned for established Sonnet workflows that need more context than Haiku without Opus rates. [1]
Claude Sonnet 4.6 API is not in the active July 2026 ranking, so APINEED does not promote its retained historical row as a current result. Version compatibility and workload tests are the defensible reasons to choose it. [1][2]
MODALITIES
Price$1.5 / $7.5 / 1MCONTEXT1M
Playground
Test Claude Sonnet 4.6 API with representative production prompts before using claude-sonnet-4.6 in a live workflow.
Providers
APINEED lists Claude Sonnet 4.6 API with text, image, and file input, text output, and a 1M context window. APINEED routing and prepaid rates are identified separately. [1]
Discount
Claude Sonnet 4.6 costs more than Claude Sonnet 5 in the current official catalog, despite being older. APINEED halves its $3 input and $15 output rates, so version compatibility should justify the difference. The table compares official Claude Sonnet 4.6 API pricing with the APINEED prepaid rate.
Official
Provider baselineInput $3/ 1MOutput $15/ 1M
BaselineAPINEED50% off
Prepaid creditsInput $1.5/ 1MOutput $7.5/ 1M
Availability
APINEED continuously monitors Claude Sonnet 4.6 API access and keeps requests on healthy capacity.
System statusLast 90 days
Claude Sonnet 4.6 API Benchmarks
Claude Sonnet 4.6 has no active July 2026 rank. A retained historical row may remain in the complete source table for context, but it is not presented as current model evidence. The complete LLM2014 logic 2026-07 table remains below, with Claude Sonnet 4.6 API highlighted when a current row exists. [2]
| 1st | GPT-5.5 (xhigh) | 83.80 | 77.46 | 7.57% | 494s | 30,811 | $25.51 | $29.57 |
| 2nd | Kimi-K3 (max) | 82.91 | 74.80 | 9.78% | 1095s | 39,912 | $16.76 | $15.00 |
| 3rd | Claude Opus 4.8 (xhigh) | 82.62 | 66.70 | 19.27% | 791s | 41,833 | $28.86 | $24.64 |
| 4th | GPT-5.6 Sol (xhigh) | 81.94 | 72.99 | 10.92% | 369s | 17,433 | $14.43 | $29.57 |
| 5th | Claude Opus 5 (xhigh) | 78.38 | 71.88 | 8.29% | 426s | 26,392 | $18.21 | $24.64 |
| 6th | Qwen3.7-Max (xhigh) | 74.56 | 66.95 | 10.21% | 374s | 54,207 | $7.81 | $5.14 |
| 7th | GLM-5.2 (max) | 73.68 | 58.27 | 20.91% | 890s | 45,683 | $5.12 | $4.00 |
| 8th | Gemini 3.1 Pro (high) | 73.36 | 58.46 | 20.31% | 214s | 25,905 | $8.58 | $11.83 |
| 9th | GPT-5.6 Luna (xhigh) | 69.49 | 51.97 | 25.21% | 242s | 38,083 | $6.31 | $5.91 |
| 10th | DeepSeek V4 Pro (max) | 68.00 | 49.97 | 26.51% | 1468s | 60,558 | $1.45 | $0.86 |
| 11th | Grok 4.5 (high) | 67.59 | 56.72 | 16.08% | 451s | 43,372 | $7.18 | $5.91 |
| 12th | Muse Spark 1.1 | 66.18 | 57.23 | 13.52% | 542s | 42,416 | $4.98 | $4.19 |
| 13th | Gemini 3.5 Flash (high) | 65.92 | 60.39 | 8.39% | 188s | 36,372 | $9.03 | $8.87 |
| 14th | Doubao-Seed-2.1-pro (high) | 58.69 | 49.35 | 15.91% | 2003s | 85,059 | $10.21 | $4.29 |
| 15th | Qwen3.7-Plus (high) | 58.50 | 44.09 | 24.63% | 1237s | 57,152 | $1.83 | $1.14 |
| 16th | Gemini 3.6 Flash (high) | 56.87 | 41.74 | 26.6% | 206s | 26,329 | $5.45 | $7.39 |
| 17th | Tencent Hy3 (high) | 54.42 | 44.60 | 18.04% | 1035s | 52,037 | $0.83 | $0.57 |
| 18th | Claude Sonnet 5 (xhigh) | 51.37 | 43.14 | 16.02% | 529s | 44,118 | $12.18 | $9.86 |
| 19th | DeepSeek V4 Flash (max) | 50.62 | 36.24 | 28.41% | 611s | 49,593 | $0.40 | $0.29 |
| 20th | MiniMax-M3 | 49.18 | 40.94 | 16.75% | 985s | 56,467 | $1.90 | $1.20 |
| 21st | Claude Opus 5 | 42.08 | 31.73 | 24.6% | 154s | 10,180 | $7.02 | $24.64 |
| 22nd | Claude Opus 4.6 | 36.88 | 25.79 | 30.07% | 65s | 4,387 | $3.03 | $24.64 |
| 23rd | Doubao-Seed-2.0-lite 0428 (high) | 35.32 | 26.77 | 24.21% | 656s | 26,726 | $0.38 | $0.51 |
| 24th | Gemini 3.5 Flash (minimal) | 33.24 | 22.22 | 33.15% | 44s | 6,189 | $1.54 | $8.87 |
| 25th | Ling-3.0-flash | 32.53 | 20.62 | 36.61% | 688s | 86,204 | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| 26th | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite (high) | 30.23 | 22.82 | 24.51% | 188s | 18,297 | $1.26 | $2.46 |
| 27th | GPT-5.5 Instant | 28.87 | 17.66 | 38.83% | 25s | 1,673 | $1.39 | $29.57 |
| 28th | Gemma 4 31B | 27.91 | 22.04 | 21.03% | 770s | 15,050 | $0.17 | $0.39 |
| 29th | MiMo-V2.5-Pro | 26.91 | 13.00 | 51.69% | 478s | 29,443 | $0.71 | $0.86 |
| 30th | Qwen3.7-Plus | 26.19 | 16.23 | 38.03% | 314s | 8,692 | $0.28 | $1.14 |
| 31st | Step-3.7-Flash | 26.18 | 13.74 | 47.52% | 258s | 44,912 | $1.46 | $1.16 |
| 32nd | Qwen3.5-27B | 24.96 | 17.98 | 27.96% | 451s | 26,391 | $0.51 | $0.69 |
| 33rd | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite (high) | 23.78 | 14.30 | 39.87% | 82s | 28,351 | $1.17 | $1.48 |
| 34th | Claude Sonnet 5 | 23.64 | 10.86 | 54.06% | 109s | 5,962 | $1.65 | $9.86 |
| 35th | Qwen3.7-Max | 22.45 | 18.53 | 17.46% | 196s | 6,710 | $0.97 | $5.14 |
| 36th | ERNIE 5.1 | 20.49 | 15.49 | 24.4% | 457s | 24,093 | $1.73 | $2.57 |
| 37th | openPangu-2.0-Flash | 19.83 | 10.76 | 45.74% | 571s | 28,199 | $0.18 | $0.23 |
| 38th | LongCat-2.0 | 19.40 | 9.74 | 49.79% | 395s | 14,886 | $0.48 | $1.14 |
| 39th | DeepSeek V4 Flash | 19.39 | 13.37 | 31.05% | 63s | 5,286 | $0.04 | $0.29 |
| 40th | Mistral Medium 3.5 | 18.44 | 13.87 | 24.78% | 194s | 27,854 | $5.77 | $7.39 |
| 41st | Doubao-Seed-2.1-pro | 17.49 | 9.74 | 44.31% | 305s | 6,009 | $0.72 | $4.29 |
| 42nd | GLM-5.2 | 14.80 | 10.43 | 29.53% | 23s | 953 | $0.11 | $4.00 |
| 43rd | Ling-2.6-1T | 13.05 | 8.39 | 35.71% | 229s | 4,770 | $0.31 | $2.29 |
| 44th | iFLYTEK Spark X2 | 12.39 | 6.21 | 49.88% | 458s | 11,285 | $0.09 | $0.29 |
| 45th | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | 11.79 | 10.28 | 12.81% | 9s | 773 | $0.03 | $1.48 |
| 46th | Mistral Medium 3.5 | 10.83 | 7.13 | 34.16% | 17s | 2,546 | $0.53 | $7.39 |
| 47th | Ling-2.6-flash | 10.07 | 4.85 | 51.84% | 25s | 4,997 | $0.04 | $0.30 |
Quick Start
Connect Claude Sonnet 4.6 API without changing the OpenAI-style request shape. Use Claude Sonnet 4.6 for applications already tuned to this release, long documents, and mixed-modal business tasks. New deployments should compare Claude Sonnet 5 on the same test set.
Get your API key
Create an APINEED key for Claude Sonnet 4.6 API and keep it in an environment variable.
export API_NEED_API_KEY=sk-apineed-v1-...Make your first request
Use claude-sonnet-4.6 for Claude Sonnet 4.6 API with the APINEED API. The request shape is compatible with OpenAI chat completions, so most SDKs only need a base URL change.
TypeScript SDKPythoncURLOpenAI SDK
import OpenAI from "openai";
const client = new OpenAI({
apiKey: process.env.API_NEED_API_KEY,
baseURL: "https://apineed.com/v1"
});
const result = await client.chat.completions.create({
model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6",
messages: [
{ role: "user", content: "Why is the sky blue?" }
]
});
console.log(result.choices[0].message.content);Enable streaming and fallbacks
Add stream: true when Claude Sonnet 4.6 API should return server-sent events. APINEED keeps routing, provider health, and fallback handling behind the same endpoint.
curl https://apineed.com/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $API_NEED_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"model": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6",
"stream": true,
"messages": [{ "role": "user", "content": "Hello" }]
}'Claude Sonnet 4.6 API Endpoint
Claude Sonnet 4.6 API accepts chat conversations here with streaming or non-streaming text output; the supported controls are listed on this page.
POST
/v1/chat/completions- Authorization
- Bearer $API_NEED_API_KEY
- Content-Type
- application/json
- HTTP-Referer
- optional - your site URL, for rankings
- X-Title
- optional - your site name, for rankings
- Model
- anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6
Parameters
Claude Sonnet 4.6 API parameters currently listed for anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6 by the OpenRouter Models API. [1]
| Name | Type | Status | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
include_reasoning | boolean | Supported | Includes reasoning content in the response when available. |
max_completion_tokens | integer | Supported | Limits the combined visible and reasoning output tokens. |
max_tokens | integer | Supported | Limits generated output tokens. |
reasoning | object | Supported | Controls reasoning behavior and token allocation. |
reasoning_effort | enum | Supported | Selects the model reasoning effort. |
response_format | object | Supported | Requests a specific response format. |
stop | string or array | Supported | Stops generation at the supplied sequence. |
structured_outputs | boolean | Supported | Enables schema-constrained structured output. |
temperature | number | Supported | Controls sampling randomness. |
tool_choice | string or object | Supported | Controls which tool the model may call. |
tools | array | Supported | Defines tools available to the model. |
top_k | integer | Supported | Restricts sampling to the highest-probability tokens. |
top_p | number | Supported | Controls nucleus sampling. |
verbosity | enum | Supported | Controls response detail for models that expose verbosity. |
Claude Sonnet 4.6 API Q&A
Model-specific answers for teams comparing Claude Sonnet 4.6 API on capability, benchmark evidence, integration, and cost.
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 API cheaper than Claude Sonnet 5?
No. Current official Claude Sonnet 4.6 rates are $3 input and $15 output, versus $2 and $10 for Claude Sonnet 5.
Does Claude Sonnet 4.6 API have a current benchmark rank?
No. APINEED does not treat its retained historical row as an active July 2026 ranking.
Who should keep using Claude Sonnet 4.6 API?
Teams with validated prompts, regression requirements, or behavior dependencies on this release have the clearest reason.
Can Claude Sonnet 4.6 read images and files?
For Claude Sonnet 4.6 API, yes. Its catalog entry includes text, image, and file inputs with text output and a 1M context.
Which endpoint serves Claude Sonnet 4.6 API?
Call Claude Sonnet 4.6 API through https://apineed.com/v1/chat/completions with claude-sonnet-4.6 as the model value. Existing OpenAI SDK clients usually need only the APINEED base URL and key.
How do I validate Claude Sonnet 4.6 API before release?
Evaluate Claude Sonnet 4.6 API on representative prompts, record quality, latency, and token use, then choose reasoning settings and fallbacks from those results.
How to Deploy the Claude Sonnet 4.6 API on apineed.com
Deploy Claude Sonnet 4.6 API through APINEED after validating its model-specific trade-offs above. The API key, credit, and endpoint flow stays consistent across the catalog.
Add credits for Claude Sonnet 4.6 API
Add credits on APINEED before deploying the Claude Sonnet 4.6 API. Pay-as-you-go billing lets usage start small and scale with production traffic.
Get your API key
Create an APINEED API key for the Claude Sonnet 4.6 API. The same key can call Claude Sonnet 4.6 and other AI APIs through apineed.com.
Set the model slug
Use claude-sonnet-4.6 as the model value when you deploy the Claude Sonnet 4.6 API. Keep the APINEED base URL at https://apineed.com/v1.
Send a request to Claude Sonnet 4.6 API
Send chat completions or responses to the Claude Sonnet 4.6 API from Claude Code, Codex, or any custom agent. The request keeps its OpenAI-compatible shape.