Claude API
How should developers route between Claude Haiku 5.5, Sonnet 5.5, and Opus 5.5 in production?
QUICK ANSWER
Route high-frequency, latency-critical requests (triage, validation, parameter extraction) to Haiku 5.5 ($0.25/$1.25 per 1M tokens); route primary code synthesis and agent workflows to Sonnet 5.5 ($3.00/$15.00 per 1M tokens); and escalate to Opus 5.5 ($15.00/$75.00 per 1M tokens) exclusively for complex architectural planning, multi-file refactoring across the 2.5M context window, and formal verification.
Tiered Multi-Agent Routing Strategy
- Tier 1 — Reflex & Triage (Claude Haiku 5.5): Sub-80ms time-to-first-token and 160 tok/s throughput. Ideal for intent classification, request routing, and real-time voice hooks ($0.25 in / $1.25 out per 1M tokens).
- Tier 2 — Agentic Synthesis (Claude Sonnet 5.5): 65.2% SWE-bench Verified coding performance. Handles standard multi-tool loops, data transformations, and HTML/CSS compilation ($3.00 in / $15.00 out per 1M tokens).
- Tier 3 — Architectural Reasoning (Claude Opus 5.5): 72.6% SWE-bench Verified and 2.5M context window with recursive self-verification 2.0. Reserved for formal proofs, coordinate geometry, and multi-file code refactors ($15.00 in / $75.00 out per 1M tokens).
Verified against: Anthropic 5.5 Pricing & Architecture Spec