Claude Sonnet 4.6 Just Dropped — 5 Things You Need to Know

Anthropic just released Claude Sonnet 4.6 on February 17, 2026, and it's a significant upgrade. The new model replaces Sonnet 4.5 as the default for free and Pro Claude users — and early testers say they often prefer it over the much pricier Opus 4.5.

Here are 5 things you need to know.

1. Near-Opus Intelligence at Sonnet Pricing

Sonnet 4.6 approaches Opus-level intelligence on real-world tasks — including complex office work, data analysis, and knowledge tasks — while keeping the same pricing as Sonnet 4.5: $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens.

That's a massive value shift. Tasks that previously required reaching for an Opus-class model can now run on Sonnet.

2. Major Coding Improvements

Developers with early access preferred Sonnet 4.6 over its predecessor by a wide margin. Key improvements include:

• Better consistency across coding tasks
• Improved instruction following
• Stronger performance on complex, multi-file edits
• Many testers preferred it even over Claude Opus 4.5 for coding

If you use Claude for development — whether through the API, Claude Code, or an IDE integration — this is the biggest practical upgrade.

3. 1M Token Context Window (Beta)

Sonnet 4.6 now supports a 1 million token context window in beta. That's roughly 750,000 words — enough to process entire codebases, lengthy legal documents, or book-length manuscripts in a single conversation.

This was previously an Opus-only feature. Having it on Sonnet dramatically lowers the cost of long-context workflows.

4. Best-in-Class Computer Use

Anthropic first introduced computer use in October 2024 and called it "experimental." With Sonnet 4.6, computer use gets a major upgrade:

• Navigating spreadsheets and complex UIs
• Filling out web forms accurately
• Handling legacy software without APIs

For teams building AI agents that interact with desktop applications or browser-based tools, Sonnet 4.6 is now the model to use.

5. Strong Safety Profile

Anthropic's safety researchers gave Sonnet 4.6 a clean bill of health, describing it as having "a broadly warm, honest, prosocial, and at times funny character, very strong safety behaviors, and no signs of major concerns around high-stakes forms of misalignment."

The full system card is publicly available.

How to Try It

Sonnet 4.6 is already live as the default model on claude.ai for Free and Pro users. API users can access it through the standard Anthropic API.

If you want to test it with structured prompts, check out our AI prompt templates — they work great with Sonnet 4.6's improved instruction following.

The Bottom Line

As of February 2026, Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the best value model in the AI market. It delivers near-Opus intelligence at a fraction of the cost, with standout improvements in coding, computer use, and long-context processing.

For a broader look at how Claude stacks up against competitors, see our ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini comparison.

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Want to get the most out of Claude and other AI tools? Explore our free AI tools and prompt library to supercharge your workflow.