Does Claude API have a free tier?

No, Claude API does not offer a free tier. Anthropic charges per token from the first request. However, new accounts receive $5 in free credits valid for one month to test the API. After credits expire, you must add a payment method to continue usage.

What counts as a token in Claude API billing?

Claude uses the same tokenizer across all models, where one token equals roughly 3.5 English characters or 0.75 words. Both your input prompt and the AI's response are counted separately and billed at different rates. Images, PDFs, and system prompts also consume tokens based on their processed content.

Is Claude API cheaper than OpenAI GPT-4?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet ($3/$15 per million tokens) is significantly cheaper than GPT-4 Turbo ($10/$30 per million tokens) for comparable performance. Claude 3 Opus matches GPT-4's capabilities at the same $15 input price but charges more for output. For budget tasks, Claude Haiku undercuts GPT-3.5 Turbo substantially.

Are there volume discounts for Claude API?

Yes, Anthropic offers volume discounts for high-usage customers, but pricing is not publicly listed. You must contact their sales team directly to negotiate custom rates, typically available for commitments exceeding $50,000 annually. Standard pay-as-you-go rates apply for all other users without minimum spending requirements.

PROVIDER GUIDE · VERIFIED 13 JUL 2026

How much does Claude API cost?

Claude API pricing varies by model: Claude 3.5 Sonnet costs $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens, Claude 3 Opus costs $15/$75, and Claude 3 Haiku costs $0.25/$1.25. All models use the same token counting method, and prices are billed per-token with no monthly minimums or subscription fees required.

Anthropic runs four price tiers across its Claude line, and one of them is currently on an introductory rate with a hard expiry date. Here's what each model actually costs, and what changes on 1 September 2026.

Model	Input /1M	Output /1M	Context
Claude Haiku 4.5	$1.00	$5.00	200K
Claude Sonnet 5*	$2.00	$10.00	1M
Claude Opus 4.8	$5.00	$25.00	1M
Claude Fable 5	$10.00	$50.00	1M

* Introductory pricing through 31 Aug 2026. Standard rate from 1 Sep 2026: $3.00 / $15.00 per 1M.

The one date to put on your calendar

Claude Sonnet 5 is priced at $2.00/$10.00 per million tokens as an introductory rate. That changes to $3.00/$15.00 — a 50% increase on both input and output — starting 1 September 2026. If Sonnet 5 is your production model and your usage is meaningful, budget for the higher rate now rather than being surprised by a bill that jumps in September. For a workload running 500M input and 100M output tokens a month, that's the difference between a $1,000/month bill and a $1,500/month bill.

Picking the right tier for the job

Haiku 4.5 — high-volume, low-complexity tasks: classification, extraction, routing, simple chat. Don't pay Sonnet or Opus rates for work Haiku handles fine.
Sonnet 5 — the default production choice for most teams: strong reasoning at a mid-tier price, currently at introductory rates through August.
Opus 4.8 — complex reasoning, long-horizon agentic tasks, work where being right matters more than being cheap.
Fable 5 — Anthropic's most capable tier, priced accordingly. Reserve for tasks that genuinely need frontier-level capability.

The lever most people skip: prompt caching

If your prompts include a stable system prompt, a fixed set of instructions, or reference documents that repeat across calls, prompt caching can cut the cost of that repeated portion by roughly 90% on cache hits. For workloads with a large, static context reused across many calls — a coding assistant with a big codebase in context, a support bot with a fixed knowledge base — this is often a bigger saving than choosing a cheaper model tier.

Prices verified against platform.claude.com/docs/about-claude/pricing, 13 July 2026. See full methodology. Use the calculator to compare Claude against every other tracked provider for your own usage.