Fugu Max vs Claude Sonnet 5
Side-by-side comparison of API pricing, specs, benchmarks, and capabilities
| Specification |
by Sakana AI
|
by Anthropic
|
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Status | Current mid tier | Current mid tier |
| Released | ||
| Pricing per million tokens | ||
| Input | $2.00/Mtok | $2.00/Mtok |
| Output | $6.00/Mtok | $10.00/Mtok |
| Blended avg | $3.00/Mtok | $4.00/Mtok |
| Cached input | $0.250/Mtok | $0.200/Mtok |
| Price basis | Sakana AI Token Plan (pay-as-you-go) list price, per 1M tokens, flat at any context length — the card states 'Fixed rates regardless of context length', unlike the context-tiered Fugu Ultra. web_search and web_fetch tool calls are billed separately at $0.007 per call and are not part of the per-token rate. The monthly subscription tiers (Standard $20, Pro $100, Max $200) bundle usage allowances rather than per-token rates and are not the list price. Sakana states the service is not offered to users in EU or EEA member states. | Standard pricing, per 1M tokens — not a promotional rate. $2/$10 was announced at launch as introductory pricing through Aug 31 2026, but Anthropic's pricing page now states that it "is now the standard price" and that "the previously scheduled increase to $3/$15 per million input/output tokens on September 1, 2026 will not occur". There is therefore no reversion date to watch. Verified 2026-08-13 against platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing. |
| Specifications | ||
| Context window | 1M tokens | 1M tokens |
| Parameters | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Speed (TPS) | — | — |
| Modalities | ||
| Input |
textimage
|
textimage
|
| Benchmarks sources: n/a / Vellum LLM Leaderboard | ||
| Avg benchmark score | — | 81.5 |
| Perf / dollar | — | 20.4 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 96.2 |
| SWE-Bench Verified | — | 85.2 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | — | 80.4 |
| BrowseComp | — | 84.7 |
| OSWorld-Verified | — | 81.2 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | — | 57.4 |
| HumanEval | — | 85.2 |
| AutoBench | — | 13.5 |
| Independent composite scores each on its own scale — not part of the average above | ||
| AA Intelligence Index | — | 38.4 |
| AA Agentic Index | — | 44.3 |
| AA-Omniscience Index (−100–100) | — | 16.4 |
| GDPval-AA v2 | — | 1598.2 ELO |
| Providers | ||
| Available from |
Sakana AI — $2.00/$6.00/Mtok
|
Anthropic — $2.00/$10.00/Mtok
|
Cost at scale
1M tokens · 50/50 input/output| Volume | Fugu Max | Claude Sonnet 5 | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1M tokens | $3 | $4 | $1 (25%) |
| 10M tokens | $30 | $40 | $10 (25%) |
| 100M tokens | $300 | $400 | $100 (25%) |
| 1000M tokens | $3000 | $4000 | $1000 (25%) |
When to pick which
distilled from the pricing and spec data above- cost dominates: $3.00/Mtok blended vs $4.00 — 25% less on the same 50/50 token mix
- your workload re-reads context (agents, RAG, long chats): cached input costs $0.200/Mtok — 90% off its list input price
Summary
Fugu Max by Sakana AI costs $2.00/Mtok input and $6.00/Mtok output, with a 1M-token context window. It supports text, image input.
Claude Sonnet 5 by Anthropic costs $2.00/Mtok input and $10.00/Mtok output, with a 1M-token context window. It supports text, image input.
On a blended cost basis, Fugu Max is 25% cheaper than Claude Sonnet 5.
The two aren't directly comparable on average benchmark score: Claude Sonnet 5 has published per-benchmark results, while Fugu Max does not yet.
Note: Pricing is per million tokens. Actual costs vary with usage patterns, prompt caching, and batch discounts. Always verify against official provider pricing pages.