🤖Claude Haiku 5.5 Cuts Price 10x, but Tokenizer Bites Back
TL;DR
Simon Willison breaks down Claude Haiku 5.5: $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 output under 100K tokens, matching GPT-6 Luna. The catch is a tokenizer that uses about 1.25x more tokens and a 5x price jump past 100K.
Simon Willison breaks down Claude Haiku 5.5: $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 output under 100K tokens, matching GPT-6 Luna. The catch is a tokenizer that uses about 1.25x more tokens and a 5x price jump past 100K.
Key Points
Base price is about 10x below Haiku 4.5's $1 input and $5 output
Past 100K tokens the price rises to $0.50 input and $2.50 output; Willison calls Luna 'a much better deal' there
Reasoning cannot be turned off; effort levels run low to max, default medium
A max-effort SVG took 5 minutes 9 seconds and cost about 3.38 cents versus 7 seconds at low effort
Max plans get $100 to $200 a month in API credits, Team up to $500 pooled
Why It Matters
Headline price cuts hide tokenizer and long-context surcharges. Run your own prompts before switching, especially anything near 100K tokens.
Quick Facts
Comments
Be the first to comment
Enjoyed this article?
Get it daily. 7am. Free. Reads in 5 minutes.
Join 3,566 builders reading daily.