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Comment by m3h | Hacker News Reader

Important to note: "Sonnet 5 is an upgrade to Sonnet 4.6, but it uses an updated tokenizer that changes how the model processes text to improve performance (this is similar to the tokenizer change we introduced with Claude Opus 4.7). The tradeoff is that the same input can map to more tokens: roughly 1.0–1.35× depending on the content type. The introductory pricing is set so that the transition to Sonnet 5 is roughly cost-neutral."

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So the post-introductory price is set such that Sonnet 5 will cost 100%-135% as much?

Correct. Albeit the nuance here is that a more capable model might solve problems more efficiently and faster, possibly saving you tokens.

As with any new model, you won't know the real impact until you start using it for your workload.

"We can raise prices in two ways: (1) raise the price per token and (2) increase the number of tokens we generate on your behalf. We promise not to do (2) maliciously. Promise."

Wouldn't it be more malicious for them not to mention this at all?

Sure, but I think doing it this way allows them to later on say they were transparent about it. Completely hiding this would make it very difficult for them excuse when getting caught.

I think the incentives are less bad since a good chunk of usage comes from subscription plans.

There was a fairly major regression in Claude Code performance for some time when they changed the system prompt to try and make it less verbose (saving tokens). And if I'm not misremembering, there were a lot of complaints when they changed the default effort from high to medium.

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