The pitch is simple: near-flagship performance at mid-tier prices. Sonnet 5 delivers performance close to Opus 4.8 on reasoning, tool use, and coding, but costs significantly less. Key numbers: - Intro pricing: $2 / million input tokens, $10 / million output tokens (through Aug 31) - Standard pricing: $3 / $15 (vs Opus 4.8 at $5 / $25) - SWE-bench Pro: 63.2% — up from Sonnet 4.6's 58.1% - Knowledge work: Actually edges out Opus 4.8 The biggest benefit? It finishes what it starts. Early testers say Sonnet 5 completes complex multi-step tasks where previous Sonnet models would stall halfway. It checks its own output without being asked, and handles sustained tool use, debugging, and brownfield code reliably. Zapier's Daniel Shepard: "We handed it a two-part job — update Salesforce tiers, send a launch announcement — and it finished end to end. That used to stall halfway. For day-to-day automation, it's a no-brainer." Why this matters: Companies rushed to deploy AI agents, then recoiled at the bills. Agents loop, call tools, and burn tokens fast. A model that gets close to Opus quality for a fraction of the cost speaks directly to that pain. Bottom line: The question is no longer whether the model is clever enough. It's whether it's cheap enough to run all day. Anthropic is betting the answer is finally yes. Available now across all Claude plans, Claude Code, and the API. Anybody tried it ????