Anthropic made Claude Sonnet 5's $2 per million input and $10 per million output token pricing permanent after its June 30, 2026 launch, canceling the planned September reversion to the prior $3/$15 standard used by Sonnet 4.6. This positions the model as a high-value agentic option with strong benchmarks on coding, tool use, and knowledge work—near Opus 4.8 levels at roughly one-third the cost—while a new tokenizer increases effective token counts by about 30%. Competitive pressure from OpenAI's GPT-6 Sol at similar rates and broader price deflation across frontier models has reinforced trader focus on whether further cuts or a new Sonnet variant will push output pricing below $10 per million by year-end. Key watchpoints include any Sonnet 5.5 release, batch or caching discounts, and Anthropic's response to ongoing rival efficiency gains.