How much does the Claude API cost in 2026?

In 2026, the Claude API (Anthropic) is billed per million tokens. For Claude Sonnet 4.5, the reference model: $3 per million input tokens, $15 per million output tokens. For Claude Haiku 4.5, the faster and cheaper variant: $0.25 input, $1.25 output. In practice, an average question (200 input tokens, 500 output tokens) costs about $0.008 with Sonnet — less than a cent. Moderate daily use (10 requests/day) lands at $2–5 per month, well below the $20 Claude Pro subscription. Ask Aurel gives pay-as-you-go access to Claude (and 5 other AIs) with no subscription: top up €10 minimum, credit never expires, each request is billed at the real API cost (platform margin is transparent).