Anthropic launches Claude Haiku 4.5: as efficient as Sonnet 4, twice as fast and three times cheaper
Anthropic continues to accelerate its update schedule with the launch of Claude Haiku 4.5, the latest version of its smallest AI model.
According to the company, this version offers performance comparable to Claude Sonnet 4, while being three times cheaper and more than twice as fast.
Optimized Performance for Speed and Cost
In a blog post, Anthropic states that Haiku 4.5 achieves 73% on the SWE-Bench Verified benchmark (assessing programming problem-solving) and 41% on Terminal-Bench, focused on command-line usage.
These scores place it on par with Sonnet 4, GPT-5, and Gemini 2.5, while slightly trailing behind the latest Sonnet 4.5.
The tests also show strong results in visual reasoning, tool usage, and interaction with computing environments, confirming that this “lightweight” model retains a broad range of capabilities.
A Model Designed for Scalability and Complementarity
Available now for all free users of Claude, Haiku 4.5 is ideal for consumer AI products where speed and server cost are priorities. Its compact format facilitates the parallel deployment of multiple Haiku agents or their integration with more powerful models like Sonnet or Opus.
“Haiku opens up a new category of production deployment possibilities,” explains Mike Krieger, Chief Product Officer of Anthropic. “Sonnet handles complex planning, while sub-agents Haiku execute tasks at high speed. We provide companies with a complete toolkit, where each model finds its balance between intelligence, cost, and speed.”
Applications: Reactive AI and Development Tools
The immediate use cases are expected to involve software development tools, where latency is critical. Andrew Filev, CEO of Zencoder, states that Haiku 4.5 “unlocks a new generation of use cases” for developers, particularly within Claude Code, already widely used for assisted programming.
A Sustained Launch Cadence
This launch comes just two weeks after Claude Sonnet 4.5 and two months after Opus 4.1, two models highly regarded as market leaders upon their release.
The previous version of Haiku dates back to October 2024, confirming Anthropic’s commitment to maintain a quarterly evolution of its models.
