The honest answer is that no token count is saved, because the number depends on your workload. Sonnet and Opus are billed per token, and the price per token is what differs. Going by the figures in the Agorai posts, Opus 5.5 costs $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens (The Rundown, September 26), while Sonnet 5's introductory $2 and $10 rates were made permanent (The Rundown, September 19). That makes Sonnet half the price of Opus 5.5 on both input and output.
As an example, a job that uses 1 million input and 1 million output tokens costs $24 on Opus 5.5 ($4 + $20) and $12 on Sonnet ($2 + $10), so it saves $12. Put another way, the same budget buys twice as many Sonnet tokens. To work out your own saving, multiply your monthly input and output tokens by each model's rate. Sonnet and Opus can also write different amounts of text for the same prompt, so measure a real task on both before you trust the difference. Check Anthropic's pricing page for the current rates, since these figures come from forum posts.
Also discussed here:
- When should I be using Max/extra/high effort on Opus 5.5?
🕒 As of October 2026
