Update, Haiku 4.5 is not just very targeted in terms of changes but also really fast. Averaging at 220token/sec is almost double most other models I'd consider comparable (though again, far to early to make a proper judgement) and if this can be kept up, that is a massive value add over other models. That is nearly Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite speed for context.

Yes, we got Groq and Cerebras getting up to 1000token/sec, but not with models that seem comparable (again, early, not a proper judgement). Anthropic has been historically the most consistent in outperforming personal benchmarks vs public benchmarks, for what that is worth so I am optimistic.

If speed, performance and pricing are something Anthropic can keep consistent long term (i.e. no regressions), Haiku 4.5 really is a great option for most coding tasks, with Sonnet something I'd tag in only for very specific scenarios. Past Claude models have had a deficiency in longer term chains of tasks. Beyond 7 minutes roughly, performance does appear to worsen with Sonnet 4.5, as an example. That could be an Achilles heel for Haiku 4.5 as well, if not this really is a solid step in terms of efficiency, but I have not done any longer task testing yet.

That being said, Anthropic once again has a rather severe issue it seems, casting a shadow upon this release. From what I am seeing and others are reporting, Claude Code currently does count Haiku 4.5 usage the same as Sonnet 4.5 usage, despite the latter being significantly more expensive. They also did not yet update the Claude Code support pages to reflect the new models usage limits [0]. I really think such information should be public by launch day and hope they can improve their tooling and overall testing, it really continues to throw a shadow over their impressive models.

[0] https://support.claude.com/en/articles/11145838-using-claude...