Claude Sonnet 5.5 cache reads drop from $0.20 to $0.10 per million tokens on October 7, 2026

What you get

On October 7, 2026, Anthropic lowered the price of prompt cache reads on Claude Sonnet 5.5 (claude-sonnet-5-5). The price went from $0.20 to $0.10 per million tokens. That is 0.05x the base input price instead of 0.1x.

The release notes say cache writes and all other prices are unchanged. The pricing page lists Claude Sonnet 5.5 at:

Base input: $2 per million tokens
5 minute cache writes: $2.50 per million tokens
1 hour cache writes: $4 per million tokens
Cache hits and refreshes: $0.10 per million tokens
Output: $10 per million tokens

A cache read is what you pay when Claude reuses a part of your prompt that it already stored, such as a long system prompt.

Prerequisites

An Anthropic API key in ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
An app that already calls claude-sonnet-5-5 with prompt caching turned on

Steps

Change nothing in your code. The new price applies to cache reads on Claude Sonnet 5.5.
Update any cost estimates or spreadsheets that used $0.20 for Sonnet 5.5 cache reads.
If you do not use prompt caching yet, read the prompt caching section of the pricing page to see if it fits your app.

Test it

Send the same cached prompt twice. The second response should report cached tokens in its usage numbers, and your next bill should price them at $0.10 per million.

Not confirmed