Anthropic ships Claude Haiku 4.5 at Sonnet 4 coding level, one-third cost

Anthropic's Claude Haiku 4.5 arrives as the company positions its compact model as a cheaper, faster alternative for developers who need near-frontier coding performance without the cost of larger models. The release extends Anthropic's lineup across its own apps and major cloud platforms, including Amazon Bedrock and Google Cloud Vertex AI. At $1 per million input tokens and $5 per million output tokens, the pricing targets real-time applications where volume matters.

The launch also comes amid political friction. This week, Bloomberg reported that David Sacks, the Trump administration's AI czar, accused Anthropic of "regulatory capture" and "fear-mongering" over its support for California's new AI transparency law. Cofounder Jack Clark pushed back, saying the company aligns with the White House on most issues but continues to advocate for responsible federal oversight. The timing suggests Anthropic is trying to demonstrate that safety and progress can coexist even as the political climate around those principles grows more hostile.