Anthropic launches Claude Haiku 5.5, its cheapest small model yet
Anthropic released Claude Haiku 5.5, which it calls its cheapest, fastest and most capable small model, saying it costs on average around 75% less to run than Haiku 4.5 and targets high-volume, cost-sensitive work such as summaries, compactions, database queries and classification. It is the first Haiku-class model with an adjustable effort setting and is pitched as a subagent alongside Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5.5 for coding; Anthropic also halved Sonnet 5.5 cache-read pricing and added a monthly API credit for Claude Max and Team subscribers. The company says this is the third 5.5 upgrade in about a month, after Opus and Sonnet.
Why it matters: Cheap small models underpin high-volume and agentic workloads, so lower cost and higher capability shift how developers pick and run models.
References 9to5Mac · AWS Machine Learning Blog · Anthropic (X) · Hacker News · AI（100+ 分） · Techmeme · The Decoder
How we got here
- OpenAI publishes 722 AI-generated math papers, citing Millennium Prize progressTechSpot · Anthropic
- Anthropic cuts Claude Sonnet 5.5 cache read price to $0.10, adds API creditsTechmeme · Anthropic
- Engineers Let GPT, Claude and Grok Drive a Real Toyota Corolla; Only One SucceededWIRED AI · Anthropic
- BofA sees strong demand for potential OpenAI, Anthropic IPOsBloomberg Technology · Anthropic
- San Francisco passes 45-day moratorium on new data centersBloomberg Technology · Anthropic
- Report: Anthropic taps Broadcom, Samsung for 2nm custom AI chipcnBeta · Anthropic