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points by nfw2 3 days ago | 0 comments

There is a chasm of performance difference between haiku and sonnet ime. Sonnet is cheaper and faster than Opus, so if you're providing a service via api where cost and speed is important, it's a big difference.

[–] datadrivenangel 3 days ago

Except Sonnet is slower, more expensive, and worse at reasoning levels above ~medium. Opus on low is faster, cheaper, and better at doing things.

[–] nfw2 3 days ago

1. In Anthropic's benchmarks, Opus's advantage over Sonnet diminishes at high reasoning levels. Sonnet max actually beats Opus max.

2. There are rote or simple tasks where higher reasoning isn't needed and one model vs the other wouldn't even be distinguishable.

3. How many tokens are used during reasoning depends as much on the task as the reasoning level.

4. Sonnet is faster and half the price per token, so Opus will only be cheaper if it can spend fewer tokens. This won't be the case for all tasks. Opus and Sonnet will also consume the same number of tokens to load context, so the relative price comparison depends a lot on where the task is context-heavy or reasoning-heavy.

[–] datadrivenangel 3 days ago

> Sonnet max actually beats Opus max.

What are you smoking and can I have some?

[–] nfw2 2 days ago

I am telling what's on Anthropic's official announcement. It's not a subjective assessment.