Anthropic Slash Claude Sonnet 5.5 50% cache read cost – Unite.AI

Anthropic, on October 7, 2026, lowered the price of cache reads on Claude Sonnet 5.5 by 50%, from $0.20 to $0.10 per million tokens, effective immediately. The company also introduced a Claude Platform API monthly credit for Max and Team subscribers: $100 per month for Max 5x, $200 per month for Max 20x, and up to $500 per month pooled across users on Team plans.

Both changes were announced alongside the launch of the Claude Haiku 5.5, the company’s new small model, in the “Additional Updates” section of the Claude Haiku 5.5 announcement. Anthropic described the moves as improvements to the value of its models and products.

Sonnet 5.5 read cache pricing

The reduction applies to cache reads, tokens billed when a subsequent API request retrieves previously cached content. Cache reads on Sonnet 5.5 now cost $0.10 per million tokens instead of $0.20. Since cache reads represent a large share of models’ token consumption, Anthropic said, the change reduces the cost of running Sonnet 5.5 on most agent tasks by about 20%. The company illustrated the change with a Terminal-Bench 4.0 graph that plots Sonnet 5.5’s accuracy versus cost per attempt at both old and new cache read speeds.

The caching section of Anthropic’s Claude platform pricing documentation states that a cache hit now costs 5% of the standard input price on Claude Opus 5.5 and Claude Sonnet 5.5: $0.20 per million tokens on Opus 5.5 and $0.10 on Sonnet 5.5. The documentation lists a 2.5% rate on the Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5.1 and the standard 10% rate on all other models. Under the multiplier system, five-minute cache writes are billed at 1.25 times the base input price and one-hour writes at double the base input price. Sonnet 5.5’s remaining fees remain unchanged: $2 per million input tokens, $10 per million output tokens, $2.50 per million tokens for five-minute cache writes, and $4 per million tokens for one-hour cache writes.

Anthropic launched Claude Sonnet 5.5 on September 28, 2026, with the same price as Sonnet 5: $2 per million input tokens, $10 per million output tokens, and $0.20 per million tokens for cache reads. The new fee replaces the launch cache read price while leaving the rest of the model’s prices intact.

Monthly API credits per plan

The second change adds a recurring monthly credit for the Claude platform, Anthropic’s API environment. Anthropic said the credit is designed to allow subscribers to experiment with building tools, apps and agents that call its API, and that it can be used on any of the company’s models. Under the terms of the program’s Help Center, Max 5x subscribers receive $100 per month and Max 20x subscribers receive $200 per month. On Team plans, credits accrue per seat ($20 for Standard seat and $100 for Premium seat) and accumulate into a single monthly balance capped at $500. Discounted Team plans, including Non-Profit and Scientists plans, receive the same amounts per seat. Anthropic’s concrete example gives a team with three Standard seats and two Premium seats $260 per month and states that adding another Premium seat would increase the next cycle’s credits to $360. The pool is calculated from seats on the plan each time credits are deposited.

Free, Pro, and Enterprise plans are not eligible. A Max or Team subscription must be active and in good standing, and new subscribers can request it after using an eligible plan for seven days. Subscriptions can be purchased on the web, iOS or Android, but credits are requested on claude.ai in a web browser, with no payment method required on the Claude platform. Anthropic’s official developer channel announced the launch on October 7, 2026, stating that the credits work on any model, including Haiku 5.5, in customer code or third-party systems. The Help Center notes that credits will be distributed over a few days and may not appear immediately to all eligible subscribers.

Request and use of credits

The claim links a single Claude Console organization to the plan. A Max subscriber, or Team Owner or Master Owner, must also have an Owner, Administrator, or Billing role in the Console organization, which can be created during the request flow. Only one organization can be linked, each organization can receive credits from only one plan, and the linked organization cannot be changed without contacting support.

Credits work with any Claude template available on the Claude platform: the Messages API and Message Batches API, Console Playground, Claude Managed Agents, and Claude Agent SDK. They do not apply to Claude Code interactive sessions in the terminal, IDE, desktop or web; to extra use in Claude, Claude Code or Claude Cowork; or to Claude on Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI or Microsoft Foundry.

Credits update every billing cycle (monthly even on annual plans), and unused credits expire at the end of each cycle rather than renewing. The monthly grant is spent before any purchased credit, is shared among everyone who has an API key in the connected organization, and appears in the Claude Console with its amount and expiration date. Credits do not change usage limits in Claude, Claude Code, or Claude Cowork. When your balance runs out, your usage draws on your purchased credits or automatically tops up if your organization has them; otherwise API requests stop until the next monthly grant and usage is never charged to the subscriber’s Claude plan.

Changes to the plan have specific consequences. Cancellation, switching to an ineligible plan or refund stops new credits, while credits already granted remain usable until expiration. Upgrading from Max 5x to Max 20x immediately grants prorated credits, followed by $200 per billing cycle. Switching from Max to Team ends the Max link, and a Team Owner or Primary Owner can request Team Credits once the Team plan is active for seven days. The Help Center says the program is separate from the previous Credit Agent SDK, which is no longer available.