Head to head · October 2026

Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Claude Opus 5 API pricing

Claude Sonnet 5.5 costs 2.5 times less per token at an 80/20 mix. Input costs 2.5x more on Claude Opus 5. Output costs 2.5x more on Claude Opus 5.

Anthropic

Claude Sonnet 5.5

Daily coding in Cursor, Cline and Claude Code.

Vendor: Anthropic
Type: Frontier
SayGM in / out: $1.78 / $8.89
OpenRouter in / out: $2.11 / $10.55
Blended, 80/20: $3.202
Per 100M tokens: $320
Output share of bill: 56%
SayGM vs OpenRouter: 16% lower

Anthropic

Claude Opus 5

Agentic coding, long multi-step tasks, hard reasoning.

Vendor: Anthropic
Type: Frontier
SayGM in / out: $4.45 / $22.23
OpenRouter in / out: $5.28 / $26.38
Blended, 80/20: $8.006
Per 100M tokens: $801
Output share of bill: 56%
SayGM vs OpenRouter: 16% lower

§ 01

Monthly bill at three usage levels

Both models on SayGM. The bars show how the price ratio turns into dollars as volume grows.

Fig. 1Monthly bill at three usage levels

Claude Sonnet 5.5 on SayGM
Claude Opus 5 on SayGM

Side project5M in · 1M out

$18

$44

Production app50M in · 15M out

$222

$556

High volume500M in · 100M out

$1,779

$4,448

Show data as a table

	Claude Sonnet 5.5 on SayGM	Claude Opus 5 on SayGM
Side project (5M in · 1M out)	$18	$44
Production app (50M in · 15M out)	$222	$556
High volume (500M in · 100M out)	$1,779	$4,448

Usage is millions of input and output tokens per month. No caching discount applied. Source: published rate cards, October 2026 snapshot. Current prices on saygm.com.

§ 02

Verdict

A common pattern is to send routine requests to Claude Sonnet 5.5 and escalate to Claude Opus 5 on failure or low confidence. On one key, that is a model name change per request rather than a second provider account.

§ 03

Per-token prices

OpenRouter figures include its 5.5% top-up fee.

USD per million tokens, input and output. OpenRouter includes its 5.5% top-up fee. Snapshot from October 2026.
Model	SayGMin / out	OpenRouterin / out, fee incl.	SayGM vs OpenRouter80/20 blend
Claude Sonnet 5.5Anthropic	$1.78 / $8.89	$2.11 / $10.55	16% lower
Claude Opus 5Anthropic	$4.45 / $22.23	$5.28 / $26.38	16% lower

Current SayGM rates

§ 04

Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Claude Opus 5 questions

Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5.5 or Claude Opus 5?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is about 2.5 times cheaper than Claude Opus 5 at an 80/20 input to output mix on SayGM, as of October 2026.

How much do Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Claude Opus 5 cost on OpenRouter?

Including the 5.5 percent top-up fee, Claude Sonnet 5.5 costs $2.11 input and $11 output per million tokens, and Claude Opus 5 costs $5.28 and $26.

Can I use Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Claude Opus 5 with one API key?

Yes. SayGM serves both through their native APIs on a single key, so simple tasks can go to Claude Sonnet 5.5 and hard ones to Claude Opus 5, or both can run in a cascade model.

§ 05