AI model API · facts read November 7, 2026
Claude API
Anthropic's model API (Claude Opus, Sonnet and Haiku models). Strong at following instructions and answering from supplied documents, with a very cheap small model.
- Free plan
- None
- Paid from
- Haiku 5.5: $0.10 per million input tokens, $0.50 output (prompts up to 100k). Sonnet 5.5: $2 input, $10 output. Opus 5.5: $4 input, $20 output. Sonnet cache reads: $0.10 per million.
- Monthly cost at 1,000 users
- $650/month Sonnet 5.5: 200M input × $2 + 25M output × $10 per million = $650. Haiku 5.5 for the same traffic: $20 + $12.50 = about $33.
- Free plan allows commercial use
- Not stated
- Open source
- No
- Self-hostable
- No
Source: Claude API pricing, read November 7, 2026. Prices change; check the vendor's page before you commit.
Best for
- Answering from documents with citations
- Agents and tool use
- A cheap small model (Haiku) for simple requests
Watch out for
- No permanent free tier; new accounts get a small test credit.
- Haiku 5.5 costs 5 times more for prompts over 100,000 tokens ($0.50 in, $2.50 out).
How Cuely scores Claude API
The published scores, from −3 to +3, that decide when Cuely picks it. Method
- +1answers over the user's own documents. Built-in citations and PDF input help answer from documents; cache reads cost 5% of input.
- +1keep costs as low as possible. Haiku 5.5 is $0.10 / $0.50 per million tokens, about $33 a month at the profile.
Claude API alternatives
Recipes with Claude API
- AI app that answers questions over your customers' documents · an alternative