LLM pricing · Anthropic

Claude Sonnet 5.5 pricing: cost per message and per user (November 2026)

In short: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Anthropic, model id claude-sonnet-5-5) costs $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens. A typical chat message costs about $0.0070, so a user on a $9.99 plan can send about 1,213 messages a month before they cost you more than they pay.

Price per million tokens

Input$2
Cached input (cache read)$0.1
Cache write (5 minutes)$2.5
Output$10

Cost per message and per user

One message = 1,500 input tokens (system prompt and recent history) and 400 output tokens.

Messages / monthAI cost / monthMargin on $9.99
Light user30$0.210$8.28
Typical user300$2.10$6.39
Heavy user3,000$21.00$-13

With prompt caching (two thirds of each prompt read from the cache), a message costs $0.0051, 27% less.

Calculate with your own numbers

Cost per message
$0.0070
AI cost per user / month
$2.10
Margin per user / month
$6.39
Break-even messages / month
1,213

List prices, standard tier, prompts under the long-context threshold. Averages hide your heaviest users: FiscaLLM shows this per real user.

Cheaper Anthropic models

Switching only your heaviest users to a cheaper model often fixes margin without touching everyone else's experience.

Similar price from other providers

Compare Claude Sonnet 5.5 with

Track Claude Sonnet 5.5 cost per user

Averages hide the users who cost you most. FiscaLLM reads token counts from each Anthropic response, prices them with the rates above (including cache reads and long prompts), and puts each user's AI cost next to what they paid through RevenueCat, Stripe or a CSV. Free and open source, with alerts and optional per-user caps.

meter.trackAnthropic(res, { userId, feature: "chat" });

See the demo dashboard or read the Claude cost per user guide.

Questions

How much does Claude Sonnet 5.5 cost per 1M tokens?

$2 per million input tokens, $0.1 per million cached input tokens, and $10 per million output tokens (standard tier, list price).

How much does one Claude Sonnet 5.5 message cost?

About $0.0070 for a 1,500-token prompt and a 400-token reply, or $0.0051 when two thirds of the prompt is read from the cache.

How many Claude Sonnet 5.5 messages can a $9.99 subscriber send?

About 1,213 a month before their AI cost uses up the $8.49 you keep after a 15% store fee. Past that, the user loses you money.

List prices from Anthropic's pricing page, standard tier; batch, priority and regional pricing differ. Check the provider for the latest. How these prices are audited.