The pace of progress in artificial intelligence is relentless, but even in a crowded field, certain releases stand out as genuine step-changes. Anthropic’s new model, Claude Sonnet 4.5, isn’t just an iteration; it’s a monumental leap forward, particularly for developers and enterprises focused on high-stakes, multi-step AI automation.
Positioned as the new champion in the Sonnet series—Anthropic’s mainstream, high-speed, and cost-effective model tier—Claude Sonnet 4.5 has fundamentally redefined what a foundation model can achieve in terms of endurance, complex reasoning, and autonomy.
For years, the industry has chased the dream of a fully autonomous AI agent—one that can execute a project from concept to completion, not just answer a single prompt. With its new, powerful agentic capabilities and coding prowess, Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the closest we’ve come yet to realizing that dream, solidifying Anthropic’s claim of having created the “best coding model in the world.”
This post will break down the features, benchmarks, and real-world implications of this groundbreaking release, ensuring you understand how to leverage the future of intelligent automation.
A New Benchmark for Software Engineering
The most significant headline surrounding Claude Sonnet 4.5 is its near-unprecedented performance in software development and agentic tasks. This isn’t just about generating boilerplate code; it’s about deep, sustained, and accurate software engineering.
Dominance in Coding and Agentic Workflows
Anthropic didn’t just tweak the previous version; they fundamentally boosted its ability to handle real-world engineering problems. The evidence is clear in the industry’s most rigorous evaluations:
- SWE-bench Verified: The model achieved a state-of-the-art accuracy of 77.2% on the SWE-bench Verified evaluation—a benchmark that uses real-world bugs and issues pulled directly from open-source GitHub projects. With parallel test-time computation, this figure jumps to 82.0%, a clear victory over all its closest competitors, including OpenAI’s GPT-5 Codex and Anthropic’s own previous Opus 4.1. This statistic alone provides a powerful reason for developers to migrate.
- Unrivaled Endurance: The model has demonstrated the ability to maintain focus and coherence for over 30 hours on complex, multi-step engineering projects. For a developer, this means the model can draft a complex architecture, write thousands of lines of code, debug across multiple files, and integrate a new feature set without losing track of the initial objective—a task that previously required constant human oversight.
- Computer Use Mastery: Beyond pure code, Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads the charts on OSWorld with a success rate of 61.4%. OSWorld tests an AI’s ability to perform real-world computer tasks, such as navigating a web browser, interacting with desktop elements, and filling out forms, pushing the boundaries of what’s known as “computer vision” into true “computer use.”
The Intelligence Beyond Code
While the coding upgrades grab the headlines, the model’s intellectual improvements extend into crucial professional domains. Early reports from experts indicate that Sonnet 4.5 shows dramatically better domain-specific knowledge and reasoning compared to older models across specialized fields:
- Finance and Law: Its ability to process and synthesize lengthy, nuanced documents makes it invaluable for tasks like regulatory compliance analysis or complex contract review.
- Medicine and STEM: The model’s reasoning capabilities show top-tier results on graduate-level reasoning benchmarks like GPQA, positioning it as an indispensable research assistant for highly technical and scientific inquiries.
The New Features: Building the Autonomous Agent
Anthropic didn’t stop at an improved core model; they introduced a suite of features designed to maximize the new agentic power of Claude Sonnet 4.5.
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Empowering the Developer Workflow
The release is coupled with significant updates to the developer tools and the Claude application interface, which streamline complex work:
- Checkpoints in Claude Code: A feature that fundamentally reduces the risk of long, complex coding sessions. Users can now easily save snapshots of their work and instantly revert to a prior checkpoint if a new change goes sideways.
- Native File Creation: Users can now generate professional documents, slides, and spreadsheets directly within a conversation with Claude, eliminating the friction of transferring context between the chat interface and external applications.
- Claude Agent SDK: This crucial new offering gives developers access to the same foundational infrastructure Anthropic uses to build its frontier products. The SDK allows for the creation of robust, custom AI agents capable of handling long, complex tasks using the new model’s extended memory and reasoning capabilities. (To dive deeper into this shift, you may be interested in reading about the [The Rise of Autonomous AI Agents and Multi-Step Workflows]).
Value Proposition: Power at an Accessible Price
One of the most appealing aspects of this launch is its commercial strategy. Despite the massive performance leap, Anthropic has confirmed that Claude Sonnet 4.5 will be available at the same price point as the previous Claude Sonnet model: $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens for the API. This makes the upgrade a simple, no-brainer performance boost for every developer and organization already integrated into the platform.
Your Next Digital Coworker
Claude Sonnet 4.5 is more than an incremental update; it signals a maturing of the AI ecosystem where powerful models are becoming capable, autonomous digital coworkers. Its sustained focus, unparalleled coding metrics, and advanced computer use capabilities cement its position as a game-changer for software engineering, research, and any enterprise seeking to orchestrate complex, multi-step workflows.
The future of work involves a seamless collaboration between human and machine. By providing this leap in agentic performance, Anthropic is pushing us closer to a world where we can offload entire complex projects—not just single tasks—to AI.
FAQs about Claude Sonnet 4.5
How much does Claude Sonnet 4.5 cost?
Anthropic has kept the pricing stable, making the upgrade a high-value proposition. The API cost for Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the same as the previous Sonnet model: $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens. Free users of the Claude application also have access, though usage may be limited by a daily token allowance.
What is the main improvement in Claude Sonnet 4.5?
The main improvement is its agentic coding and real-world computer use capabilities. It is claimed to be the “best coding model in the world,” demonstrated by its state-of-the-art performance on the SWE-bench Verified evaluation and its ability to maintain focus on complex projects for over 30 hours.
How does Claude Sonnet 4.5 compare to GPT-5 or Gemini?
Claude Sonnet 4.5 generally outperforms rivals like GPT-5 and Gemini 2.5 Pro across key software engineering and agentic benchmarks. Specifically, it achieves higher scores on the SWE-bench Verified (real-world coding) and OSWorld (real-world computer use) evaluations.
What are the new ‘Computer Use’ features?
The new ‘Computer Use’ functionality means the model can interpret what appears on the screen, navigate graphical user interfaces, and autonomously perform multi-step tasks within an operating environment, such as filling out complex spreadsheets or creating a full presentation.
What is the Claude Agent SDK?
The Claude Agent SDK is a new set of tools for developers that allows them to build custom, highly capable AI agents using the same core infrastructure that powers Anthropic’s frontier products. It leverages the model’s extended memory and sophisticated reasoning for creating robust, multi-step applications.