TL;DR: The Claude 5.5 family has Opus 5.5 (released Sept 22, 2026) for complex work needing judgment, Sonnet 5.5 (released Sept 28, 2026) as the faster, cheaper everyday model, and Haiku 5.5 due in the coming weeks. Opus and Sonnet both offer a 1 million token context window and up to 128K output tokens; they differ mainly in speed, price and how much judgment they sustain.
Anthropic’s Claude 5.5 family follows a clear tiering: a flagship for hard problems, a fast mid-tier for daily work, and a lightweight model for high-volume tasks. Here is how they line up.
The Family at a Glance
| Model | Released | Price (in/out per M) | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Opus 5.5 | Sept 22, 2026 | $4 / $20 | Complex work, judgment |
| Sonnet 5.5 | Sept 28, 2026 | $2 / $10 | Everyday tasks, coding |
| Haiku 5.5 | Coming weeks | TBA | High-volume, lightweight |
Opus 5.5: The Flagship
Opus 5.5 is built for complex work requiring careful judgment. It costs about 40% less to run than Opus 5 and generates output more than 30% faster. A Fast Mode in Claude Code goes up to 2.5x that speed.
Sonnet 5.5: The Daily Driver
Sonnet 5.5 is the faster, lower-cost complement to Opus 5.5 – strong at bug fixes, feature iteration, and polished documents, slides and spreadsheets. It holds Sonnet 5’s $2/$10 pricing and runs 30%+ faster.
Haiku 5.5: Coming Soon
Haiku 5.5 is due in the coming weeks and is expected to serve high-volume, latency-sensitive tasks where cost per call matters most.
Which One Should You Pick?
Default to Sonnet 5.5 for most work. Use Opus 5.5 when a task is complex or high-stakes. Once available, use Haiku 5.5 for simple, high-volume calls like classification or short responses.
Learn by Building
Pick a model and build something at a hackathon. Join an AI hackathon on Reskilll, read the vibe coding guide, or browse all events.