Anthropic introduces Claude Haiku 5.5 in competition to cheaper, open source models

The Claude-maker said that the model was aimed at handling high-volume, cost-sensitive tasks, as well as quick and repetitive activities [File] | Photo Credit: REUTERS Anthropic on Wednesday (October 7, 2026) announced the Claude Haiku 5.5 model, describing it as its “cheapest, fastest, and most capable small model” yet.The Claude-maker said that the model was aimed at handling high-volume, cost-sensitive tasks, as well as quick and repetitive activities. The company suggested live customer support and browser use as potential use-cases for the model.Anthropic further noted that Claude Haiku 5.5 paired well with Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5.5 as a subagent on coding work.On the cybersecurity front, the AI company backed by Amazon and Google said that Claude Haiku 5.5 showed fewer instances of misaligned behaviour and lower willingness to cooperate with misuse.Anthropic also announced price reductions for its models and users.“We’re halving the price of Claude Sonnet 5.5’s cache reads, which means Sonnet 5.5 now runs around 20% cheaper on most agentic work. And we’re introducing a new monthly API credit for our Claude Max and Team subscribers, designed to support our users in building new agents and applications that run on the Claude Platform,” said Anthropic in a blog post.Anthropic announced that Claude Haiku 5.5 was available on platforms including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. Published - October 08, 2026 11:56 am IST