Processing or generating 500,000 words (approximately 660,000 tokens) with Claude Sonnet 5 ranges from $0.132 (cached input) to $6.60 (full generation).
You send 500,000 words as prompt context, documentation, or background knowledge.
Claude Sonnet 5 drafts a complete 500,000 words article, chapter, or code module.
400,000 words input prompt + 100,000 words output reply.
| Model | Provider | Input Cost (500,000 words) | Cached Input Cost | Output Cost (500,000 words) | Context Limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Sonnet 5 (Current) | anthropic | $1.32 | $0.132 | $6.60 | 1,000,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Terra | openai | $1.28 | $0.128 | $7.68 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.4 Workhorse | openai | $1.60 | $0.16 | $9.60 | 256,000 |
| o3-mini | openai | $0.704 | $0.352 | $2.816 | 200,000 |
| o4-mini | openai | $0.704 | $0.176 | $2.816 | 256,000 |
| o1-mini | openai | $0.704 | $0.352 | $2.816 | 128,000 |
For Claude Sonnet 5 (claude_bpe tokenizer), 500,000 words is approximately 660,000 tokens (an average ratio of 1.32 tokens per word in English). Code, technical vocabulary, and non-English scripts will have higher token densities.
Sending 500,000 words as input costs $1.32 (or $0.132 with prompt caching). Generating 500,000 words as output costs $6.60. Output tokens are more expensive because autoregressive token generation requires significantly more computation per token.
Yes! If your input text is part of a repeated context, prompt caching saves 50% to 90% (costing $0.132). For non-urgent asynchronous batch processing, 24-hour batch queues provide a flat 50% discount across all tokens (costing $0.66 for input, $3.30 for output).
At an average human reading speed of 250 words per minute, 500,000 words takes approximately 2000 minutes to read. In contrast, Claude Sonnet 5 can process or generate this text in seconds.