Claude 3.5 Sonnet is a new AI model from Anthropic that works faster and smarter than earlier versions. It can read and write text and also work with images. It performs well on tests that measure how well a model can think and solve problems, and code. It is part of a family of products that includes Claude 3.5 Haiku and Claude 3.5 Opus, which will appear later in 2025.
Claude 3.5 Sonnet shines at tasks that need careful thought and a friendly tone. It can handle jokes, follow multi-step instructions, and create content that feels natural. It also works with images and graphs in ways that other models struggle with. Users can ask it to draw charts or write code and then see those results in an interactive form.
This model is free to try on Claude.ai, but there are limits on how many prompts a free user can send. People who need more use or higher speed can sign up for a Pro plan or use it through API services like Anthropic API, Google Cloud Vertex AI, or Amazon Bedrock.
How Claude 3.5 Sonnet Works
Claude 3.5 Sonnet is built from the earlier Claude 3 Opus model, but it is faster and more powerful. It was trained on a large amount of text and code. This training lets it learn patterns of human language and logic. When a user asks a question, it looks at its training data to form an answer that fits the request.
The model uses its vision to comprehend both shapes and text in the picture or chart shown to it. Then it is capable of discussing what it understands. The application may also draw new charts or graphs using code and the data the user supplies. Users can begin a chat with the Sonnet model by entering prompt messages in the Claude.ai interface.
Claude 3.5 Sonnet also uses a system of safety checks. These checks run in the background to keep the model from answering harmful questions or sharing wrong information. The model has been tested by teams inside and outside Anthropic to make sure it stays safe for most tasks.
What Are Artifacts
Artifacts is a new feature that comes with Claude 3.5 Sonnet. It lets users see and work with the model’s output in an interactive way. Instead of just reading text answers, users can look at charts or code and run them right away.
When a user asks the model to create a chart, the model writes code in the background. Then Artifacts shows that code in one pane and a live chart in another pane. Users can edit the code or change colors and see the chart update in real time. This way, the user works with Claude like a teammate who can produce visual results on demand.
Artifacts also works with simple games or web layouts. In a demo, the model wrote a small side-scrolling game in under a minute. Users saw the code and could click a play button to try the game right in the chat window. This feature turns a text chat into a more hands-on creative tool.
To use Artifacts, users first turn it on inside Claude.ai. They click their initials in the top corner, then choose Feature Preview. There, they switch on Artifacts. After that, any prompt that asks for code or charts can open an Artifact window. It shows code in a code tab and the result in a preview tab.
How to Activate Artifacts
To activate Artifacts, the user must have a Claude.ai account. Inside the web interface, the user clicks on their account initials and then Feature Preview. In that menu, they toggle Artifacts on. Now, the Artifacts option appears whenever the model generates something that can be shown visually or in code form.
Using Claude 3.5 Sonnet for Coding
Claude 3.5 Sonnet is very strong at writing, editing, and running code. It shows real skill at fixing bugs, adding features, or creating new code from scratch.
If a software engineer asks Claude to write tests for a function, the model can produce code that runs those tests. If there is a bug in the code that crops images into circles, Claude can look at the code, find the error, and provide a corrected version. It can also explain what the bug was and why the new code works better.
Engineers can use Artifacts to test the code directly in the chat window. They see raw code in the code tab, then click a run button in the preview tab to execute it if the environment supports it. This helps them iterate faster and catch errors before moving to their own work environment.
Using Claude 3.5 Sonnet for Visual Work
People who need to show data in meetings or reports can ask Claude 3.5 Sonnet to make charts. For example, they can paste a table of numbers and say make a bar chart. Claude writes JavaScript code that builds an interactive chart using a library like Recharts. Then Artifacts shows the chart next to the code. The user can copy the code or download the chart as an image.
In other cases, an educator might give Claude two graphs and ask it to make slides that explain what each graph means. Claude can read the text in the graphs and then create presentation slides in HTML format. The slides can include text points, images, and transitions. With Artifacts, the educator sees how the slides look in a web preview and can adjust colors or fonts on the spot.
Using Claude 3.5 Sonnet for Writing
Claude 3.5 Sonnet can help anyone write stories, articles, or emails. It follows instructions about tone, style, and audience. If a user asks for a short article in a friendly voice, Claude produces text that feels more human than many other models.
The model can also create outlines or bullet points to structure a piece of writing. Then it can expand each point into a full paragraph. A student might ask for help writing a summary of a book or an employee might ask for a polished email draft. Claude delivers well well-organized and clear text that the user can edit as needed.
Artifacts can show writing in a formatted way when the user asks for a markdown preview. The user sees code for markdown in one pane and the rendered format in the other. This helps writers check headings lists or links before they copy the text to their own tools.
Claude 3.5 Sonnet Performance Benchmarks
Claude 3.5 Sonnet was tested on many standard benchmarks. In coding tests like HumanEval, it scored over ninety percent accuracy. This means it solved most coding problems posed in that test. By contrast, the Claude 3 Opus solved less than half of those same problems. GPT-4o and Gemini 1.5 Pro were strong contenders, but Sonnet often came out on top in code tasks.
In knowledge tests like MMLU (which covers college-level subjects), Claude 3.5 Sonnet scored close to ninety percent. GPT-4o scored slightly higher, but Sonnet still proved to be very capable at understanding and answering complex questions across many domains.
The model also shone on visual benchmarks such as MathVista, where it scored nearly seventy percent. This test asks the model to solve math problems from images. Sonnet’s strong vision abilities let it interpret graphs and equations accurately. In fact, it outperformed all other models on several vision tasks, including chart question answering and reading text in images.
In a general reasoning test called BIG-Bench-Hard, which covers graduate-level logic puzzles, Claude 3.5 Sonnet achieved over ninety percent. This shows that the model can reason deeply and handle tricky problems better than many rivals. These high scores reflect both its language and visual reasoning strengths.
How to Access Claude 3.5 Sonnet
Anyone can try Claude 3.5 Sonnet by going to Claude.ai and selecting the Sonnet model in the user interface. The free tier lets a user send about ten or fewer prompts before hitting a limit. To use it more often or for larger tasks, a Pro subscription is required. Pro users enjoy faster rates and more tokens per month.
Developers who want to integrate Claude 3.5 Sonnet into their own apps can use the Anthropic API. This gives them direct access to the model with a pay-as-you-go cost of three dollars per million input tokens and fifteen dollars per million output tokens. A token is a piece of text, such as a word or part of a word. The model also supports a large context window of up to 200,000 tokens. Google Cloud Vertex AI and Amazon Bedrock also offer Claude 3.5 Sonnet for users who already work in those environments.
Claude 3.5 Sonnet Use Cases
Claude 3.5 Sonnet has many possible uses. People in education can use it as a tutor to explain math concepts or edit essays. Marketers can ask it to write catchy copy or analyze campaign data visually. Developers can ask it to debug code or build small demo apps. Researchers can ask it to summarize scientific papers or create charts for presentations.
A biology professor invited Claude to look at experimental data and create slides for a lecture. The professor asked it to write JavaScript code for a presentation, and Sonnet delivered a working script. This saved the professor many hours of manual work. In business, a manager can ask it to draw sales graphs from spreadsheets, then discuss the trends in simple language. This helps the team focus on strategy rather than struggling with chart tools.
Small startups can use the model to speed up website design, marketing content, or customer service chatbots. They can integrate it through the API and pay only for what they use. Nonprofits can also use it to write grant proposals or analyze survey results without needing a big tech team. The affordability and speed make Claude Sonnet a good fit for many fields.
How to Test Claude 3.5 Sonnet
To test, Sonnet users can go to the web interface and run sample prompts. A good first prompt is asking it to summarize a news article or answer a simple quiz question. Then try more complex tasks like generating a chart from data or writing code for a basic app. This helps the user see how the model handles different types of requests.
Users should note the turnaround time. Sonnet runs at about twice the speed of its predecessor. If a task took ten seconds on the older model, it may take only five seconds with Sonnet.
It also helps to compare results. A user can ask the same prompt to GPT-4o Gemini 1.5 Pro or Claude 3 Opus and see how the answers differ. This shows Sonnet’s strengths in reasoning or vision tasks. Users can record response quality, speed, and whether the output requires manual edits. Over time, these notes guide choices about which model best serves each need.
Claude 3.5 Sonnet Pricing Compared
For personal use, Sonnet is about $20 per month for a Pro plan. This matches similar plans from OpenAI and Google for their top models. The pay-as-you-go API price is $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens. Compared to GPT-4o, which costs $20 per million tokens, Sonnet is more cost-effective for most tasks. Teams can also buy bulk credits at a discount when using enterprise plans on Vertex AI or Bedrock.
What’s Next
Claude 3 .5 Sonnet represents a step forward in AI models by working faster at a lower cost. It can read, write, and think about images in a way that most other models cannot. The new Artifacts feature makes it possible to interact with code graphs or simple apps directly inside a chat. This gives users a more hands-on experience and speeds up tasks that used to take hours. Sonnet will keep its leading position among users who want a good balance of speed, cost, and capability as Anthropic brings in more models in the Claude 3.5 family. Many fields can find Claude 3.5 Sonnet to be useful, whether it is for coding analysis or writing help.
