Anthropic has launched Claude Haiku 5.5, the latest and smallest model in its Claude 5.5 family. The company says the new model is its fastest, cheapest and most capable small model yet, targeting businesses that need to run AI systems at high volume.
The biggest change is cost. Anthropic says Claude Haiku 5.5 costs around 75% less to run on average than Claude Haiku 4.5. The company has also cut the per-token price for many requests by 90%, making the model more suitable for applications that send large numbers of requests.
The launch completes Anthropic’s Claude 5.5 model lineup, following the releases of Claude Opus 5.5 and Claude Sonnet 5.5.
Claude Haiku 5.5 Targets Speed and Cost for AI Workloads
Anthropic built Claude Haiku 5.5 for tasks where speed and cost are more important than using the company’s largest models. The company highlights use cases such as:
- Document summarization
- Context compaction
- Database queries
- Classification
- Information extraction
- Request routing
- Live customer support
- Browser-based tasks
- Voice applications
- AI agents and subagents
Anthropic also expects Haiku 5.5 to work alongside larger Claude models. For example, developers can use Opus 5.5 or Sonnet 5.5 for more complex coding work and assign smaller, repetitive tasks to Haiku 5.5.
This approach could help companies reduce the cost of running AI agents, particularly when an application needs to make thousands or millions of model calls.
ALSO READ: Anthropic Launches Claude Opus 5.5 With Fable-Level Performance at 60% Lower Cost
Claude Haiku 5.5 Cuts Input Costs by 90% for Smaller Prompts
Claude Haiku 5.5 starts at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens for prompts up to 100,000 tokens. For prompts larger than 100,000 tokens, the price rises to $0.50 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens.
For comparison, Claude Haiku 4.5 was priced at $1 per million input tokens and $5 per million output tokens. That means the list price for requests up to 100,000 tokens is 90% lower than Haiku 4.5.
However, Anthropic’s overall estimate is a 75% average reduction in running costs because longer requests have a smaller discount. Anthropic also says around 90% of requests to its previous Haiku model were within the lower pricing tier, making the price cut particularly relevant for common workloads.
Haiku 5.5 Comes With a 1 Million Token Context Window
Despite its lower price, Claude Haiku 5.5 includes a 1 million token context window and supports up to 128,000 output tokens. The model also supports adaptive thinking. This allows developers to control how much reasoning effort the model uses for a particular task.
Anthropic lists Haiku 5.5 as its fastest model and positions it for applications where response time matters. This includes customer service, browser operations and other real-time experiences. The model accepts both text and images as input and produces text output.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 Gets a 50% Price Cut on Cache Reads
The Haiku 5.5 launch also brings a pricing change for Claude Sonnet 5.5. Anthropic has halved the price of Sonnet 5.5 cache reads. The company says the change makes Sonnet 5.5 around 20% cheaper for most agentic workloads.
This is important as AI agents increasingly make repeated model calls while working through longer tasks. Lower cache costs can reduce spending when applications repeatedly use the same context. Anthropic is therefore making changes across its model lineup rather than relying on Haiku 5.5 alone to reduce costs.
Claude Haiku 5.5 Is Available Across Major Cloud Platforms
Claude Haiku 5.5 is available through Anthropic’s Claude Platform as well as several major cloud platforms. Developers can access the model through:
- Claude API
- Amazon Bedrock
- Google Cloud
- Microsoft Foundry
- Claude Platform on AWS
The model is listed with the model ID claude-haiku-5-5. Anthropic released it on October 7, 2026. This broad availability gives businesses that already use Anthropic’s models a way to test the new lower-cost model without moving their workloads to a different AI provider.
ALSO READ: Anthropic Expands Cloud Capacity With $11.6 Billion Akamai Commitment
Claude Haiku 5.5 Completes Anthropic’s Claude 5.5 Lineup
Claude Haiku 5.5 is the third Claude 5.5 model released by Anthropic in a short period. The company introduced Claude Opus 5.5 on September 22, followed by Claude Sonnet 5.5 on September 28. Haiku 5.5 now completes the range with a model focused on speed, volume and lower operating costs.
The three models give developers different options depending on the workload. Opus is aimed at more demanding tasks, Sonnet provides a balance between capability and cost, while Haiku is positioned for high-volume and latency-sensitive workloads.
Haiku 5.5 Could Help Companies Cut AI Agent Costs
The pricing of Claude Haiku 5.5 comes as companies are looking for cheaper ways to run AI agents and automated applications. AI agents can make repeated calls to language models while completing tasks. Even when individual calls are inexpensive, costs can rise quickly at large volumes.
Anthropic’s 75% average reduction could therefore make Haiku 5.5 attractive for companies that need to process large amounts of information or operate AI features continuously.
The model’s combination of a 1 million token context window, adaptive thinking and low token pricing also gives developers more flexibility in deciding which Claude model should handle each part of an application.
Anthropic Pushes Cost-Efficient AI With Haiku 5.5
Claude Haiku 5.5 shows Anthropic’s growing focus on the economics of AI deployment. Instead of competing only on model capability, the company is also trying to make frequent AI usage cheaper for businesses.
With 75% lower average running costs, a starting price of $0.10 per million input tokens, a 1 million token context window and faster response times, Haiku 5.5 is positioned as the model for repetitive and high-volume AI workloads.
The bigger test will be how much companies can save in real-world applications. If Haiku 5.5 can handle a larger share of routine agent and automation tasks while maintaining the required quality, it could become an important lower-cost option within Anthropic’s model lineup.
