Anthropic has officially released its latest AI models, Claude 4 Sonnet and Claude 4 Opus, introducing powerful advancements in artificial intelligence performance and usability. These new models set a benchmark for extended reasoning, faster development workflows, and practical business use.

Key Features and Enhancements

• One-Hour Caching: Both Sonnet and Opus now support a groundbreaking 1-hour prompt caching system. This enables repeated prompts to be served instantly for up to one hour, dramatically reducing response latency and server load—especially valuable for high-traffic or repeated-query scenarios.
• Extended Reasoning & Memory: Claude 4 Opus can perform complex, multi-step reasoning for up to seven hours, far surpassing previous generations. Sonnet offers a balance of speed and capability, making it ideal for both general and advanced tasks.
• Tool Use and “Extended Thinking”: The models can now intelligently switch between reasoning, web search, and tool usage, improving response accuracy and contextual understanding in real-time.
• Improved Coding & Task Automation: Claude 4 Opus is recognized as Anthropic’s strongest coding model yet, excelling at autonomous code generation, debugging, and lengthy problem-solving sessions.

Pricing and Availability

Claude 4 Sonnet is accessible to both free and paid users, while Opus is reserved for premium plans. Pricing remains consistent: Opus is $15 per million input tokens and $75 per million output tokens; Sonnet is $3 and $15 per million input and output tokens respectively.

Industry Impact

The release has been widely praised in the tech industry for delivering advanced capabilities while also emphasizing responsible AI use. The one-hour caching feature is expected to boost productivity for developers, researchers, and businesses automating customer support, data analysis, or creative content workflows.

As these new Claude models become integrated into more applications and services, Anthropic's focus on safety and transparency continues to guide their development.

Conclusion

The arrival of Claude 4 Sonnet and Opus with one-hour prompt caching represents a significant leap forward for accessible, efficient, and powerful AI. Whether you’re building with AI for the first time or scaling enterprise-grade solutions, these models offer enhanced speed, reliability, and flexibility for the future of human-AI collaboration.