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Claude Model Selector: Opus, Sonnet or Haiku?

ClaudeAIHub.

Not sure which Claude model to use? Answer five questions and get a starting recommendation. The right model depends on your task complexity, cost sensitivity, and whether you’re using the app or the API.

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Answer questions about your task type, output length, speed requirements, and budget sensitivity. The selector maps your answers to the Claude model best suited to your use case — Claude Fable 5, Opus 4.8, Sonnet 4.6, or Haiku 4.5.

What is your main task?

What matters most to you?

How large are your inputs?

How long are the outputs you need?

How will you use Claude?

Claude Mythos 5 is a restricted, trusted-access model and is not included in these recommendations. Model availability and capabilities change — always check Anthropic's model docs before choosing. ClaudeAIHub.

Claude Models Explained

Claude Fable 5

Anthropic’s most capable widely released model, launched June 9, 2026. Choose it when you need the highest available capability — the most demanding reasoning, long-horizon agentic work, complex coding, and vision-heavy tasks. Priced at $10/$50 per MTok via the API. See the Claude Fable 5 guide for specs, access, and safeguards.

Claude Opus 4.8

Anthropic’s most capable Opus-tier model. Best for tasks that require deep reasoning, multi-step planning, complex coding, and agentic workflows at half the per-token cost of Fable 5. Available via the API and on paid claude.ai plans.

Claude Sonnet 4.6

The best combination of speed and intelligence across the Claude 4 family. Handles most professional writing, research, coding, and business tasks well. Supports extended thinking for tasks that benefit from deeper analysis. Available in the claude.ai Pro plan and API.

Claude Haiku 4.5

The fastest model in the current lineup. Designed for high-volume, latency-sensitive API workloads where cost and speed matter more than maximum capability. Good for simple tasks, classification, fast Q&A, and processing large batches. Available via API.

Model Comparison

Feature	Claude Opus 4.8	Claude Sonnet 4.6	Claude Haiku 4.5
Best for	Complex reasoning, agentic coding	Balance of speed and quality	Speed, cost efficiency, scale
Context window	1M tokens	1M tokens	200k tokens
Max output	128k tokens	64k tokens	64k tokens
Input price	$5/MTok	$3/MTok	$1/MTok
Output price	$25/MTok	$15/MTok	$5/MTok
Extended thinking	No (use adaptive thinking)	Yes (deprecated, use adaptive)	Yes
Adaptive thinking	Yes	Yes	No
Relative speed	Moderate	Fast	Fastest

Claude Fable 5 sits above this table: $10/MTok input, $50/MTok output, 1M token context, 128k max output, adaptive thinking always on. Claude Mythos 5 shares Fable 5’s specs but is restricted to Anthropic’s Project Glasswing trusted-access program and is not a normal selector option. Verify current pricing and availability at platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/models/overview.

App Users vs API Users

Claude app users (claude.ai, desktop, mobile): The model you access depends on your subscription plan. The Free plan provides access to limited model usage. Pro gives access to Sonnet. Max and higher tiers give access to Opus. You don’t choose a model ID directly — the app selects based on your plan and the task.

API users: You choose the model ID explicitly in each API request. You can use any available model regardless of what app plan you have. API billing is separate from app plans — you pay per token.

When to Try a Different Model

Output quality is too low: Try the next tier up. Moving from Haiku to Sonnet often significantly improves structured or reasoning-heavy tasks.
Cost is too high: Try the next tier down. Many tasks that feel like they need Opus work just as well on Sonnet.
Latency is too high: Try Haiku for time-sensitive applications where response speed matters more than depth.
Context window exceeded: Move from Haiku (200k) to Sonnet or Opus (1M) for long documents.