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Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 5 vs Cohere Command A+

Anthropic against Cohere, compared on context, price, and attributed benchmark results.

Recorded profile verification October 2, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: Medium — see receipts below

Anthropic

Claude Sonnet 5

Balanced

vs

Cohere

Cohere Command A+

Balanced · Open weights

AI model capability comparison
SpecificationClaude Sonnet 5Cohere Command A+
ProviderAnthropicCohere
TierBalancedBalanced
Context windowWinner: 1M128K
Max outputWinner: 128K64K
Input / 1M tokens$2Winner: $0.80
Output / 1M tokens$10Winner: $3.20
WeightsClosedOpen
ParametersNot verifiedUnverified218B total / 25B active (sparse MoE)
Reasoning levelslow, medium, high, xhigh, maxNot verifiedUnverified
Modalitiestext, imagetext, image
LicenseNot verifiedUnverifiedApache 2.0
API model idclaude-sonnet-5command-a-plus-05-2026
ReleasedJune 30, 2026May 20, 2026
Terminal-Bench 2.1 · source date Claude Sonnet 5: 2026-06-3080.4Not verifiedUnverified
Humanity's Last Exam · source date Claude Sonnet 5: 2026-06-3057.4Not verifiedUnverified
LiveBench · source date Claude Sonnet 5: 2026-09-0576Not verifiedUnverified
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index · source date Cohere Command A+: 2026-10-01Not verifiedUnverified13

Dates beside benchmark scores refer to the linked source’s publication or capture date unless that source explicitly states when it measured the result. A shared URL alone does not establish comparable runs; unverified setups are marked. Prices are USD per million tokens at standard rates, excluding batch and caching discounts. Values we could not confirm from the provider are shown as “Not verified” rather than estimated.

Benchmark receipts

Where each score comes from, and how far it can be compared across models.

  • Source date2026-10-01
    Artificial Analysis (Command A+)

    Composite index blending reasoning, knowledge, and coding evals into one 0–100 score.

    Comparable with caveatOnly same-version scores are comparable. v4.3.2 was rebaselined (the top score fell from 66 on v4.1.1 to ~58), so v4.1.1 figures must not be compared with v4.3.2 figures — check the cited source and its date.

  • Source date2026-09-05
    LiveBench official leaderboard (benchmark-owned), xhigh effort

    Contamination-resistant general capability across reasoning, coding, math, data analysis, and language, with monthly question refreshes.

    Comparable with caveatCompare only observations confirmed to use the same exact question-set version. Date proximity (including within one month) does not establish identical questions; when the version is unavailable, treat the scores as unaligned.

  • Source date2026-06-30
    Anthropic announcement (vendor, with tools)

    Frontier-knowledge ceiling: extremely hard multi-domain questions written to be near-impossible without deep expertise.

    Comparable with caveatSubset/tool configurations (text-only vs with-tools) differ between vendors and materially change scores; must match configuration to compare.

  • Source date2026-06-30
    Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 system card, sections 8.1 and 8.3 (vendor-reported; mini-SWE-agent harness) (mini-SWE-agent; effort and experiment date not specified in the summary table)

    Agentic terminal work: multi-step tasks executed in a sandboxed shell environment.

    Comparable with caveatNot comparable with Terminal-Bench 3.0 or 4.0 (different task sets) or v1; harness configuration (container, time limits) also shifts results.

Pricing tiers

Claude Sonnet 5: Standard $2/$10 per MTok with no long-context surcharge. Cache reads $0.20; 5-minute writes $2.50 and 1-hour writes $4. Batch $1/$5. US-only inference adds 10% where supported. Batch supports 300K output with output-300k-2026-03-24; standard stays 128K. Knowledge cutoff Jan 2026; retirement not sooner than June 30, 2027.

Cohere Command A+: Azure's current USD retail feed lists Command A Plus public-cloud Global at $0.80/$3.20 per MTok and data-zone meters at $0.88/$3.52. US Government Global is $1.00/$4.00 and data-zone $1.10/$4.40. These are Azure rates, not Cohere-direct prices. Cohere's A+ page says trial and production keys are free until rate limits; general paid-key documentation and production-access requirements differ. Standard Vault lists A+ L/XL at $17.50/$32.50 per instance-hour, typically via a waitlist; encrypted beta design-partner access is separately scoped.

BalancedRecord checked October 1, 2026

Claude Sonnet 5

Claude Sonnet 5 is Anthropic's previous Sonnet generation for high-volume agentic work at $2/$10.

Best for

  • Everyday generation
  • High-volume agents
  • Cost-sensitive work

Watch out

Active legacy. Sonnet 5.5 launched September 28 at the same token price, with breaking changes to thinking, forced tool use, computer use, advisor choices and progress blocks. Sonnet 5 rejects non-default temperature/top_p/top_k; test the exact target model before switching.

BalancedOpen weightsRecord checked October 2, 2026

Cohere Command A+

Command A+ is Cohere's Apache-declared open-weight 218B/25B sparse MoE for enterprise text, image and agentic workloads; its W4A4 checkpoint is distinct from a hosted service contract.

Best for

  • Open-weight deployments
  • Enterprise RAG
  • Tool use

Watch out

The checked Cohere API ID has 128,000 context and 64,000 maximum output. Its W4A4 checkpoint config lists 200,000 positions; that does not expand the hosted limit. Thinking is enabled by default and can be disabled with thinking.type=disabled; thinking.token_budget is a budget rather than a low/medium/high menu. Cohere recommends leaving at least 1K tokens for the answer. Trial A+ is 20 requests/minute; the rate-limit page caps trial/newer-model keys at 1,000 calls/month and directs production access to sales. Do not treat the model-specific free-use statement as unlimited production capacity or as an Azure/Vault entitlement.

When the cheaper one wins

Cohere Command A+ is cheaper on output at $3.20 per million tokens against $10 for Claude Sonnet 5 — about 3.1×. Use the cheaper tier for classification, extraction, summarisation, and any task where the expensive model’s extra score does not change the accepted output. The expensive one only pays if your hardest task actually fails on the cheap tier. This compares standard short-context token rates, not total cost per accepted task. Include input, cache, context tiers, schedules, retries and review in your pilot.

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Evidence confidence: Medium

How strong and complete the evidence behind this comparison is — not a prediction of which model is better.

  • Pricing verified on both sides — Input and output rates are verified for both models.
  • 3/5 core specs verified on both sides — Not published for at least one side: parameter count, reasoning levels.
  • No directly aligned benchmark setup — No benchmark has matching cited sources, source dates, units, effort and recorded run details on both models.
  • Verified within the last 90 days — Older of the two catalog checks was 25 days ago.
  • Both models carry source citations — Each side has at least two catalog sources on record.

Source receipts

Each catalog figure was checked against the provider or an independent second source on the date shown.

Related comparisons

Diving deeper on one model? Claude Sonnet 5 · Cohere Command A+

Common questions

Claude Sonnet 5 vs Cohere Command A+

Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.

Is Claude Sonnet 5 or Cohere Command A+ cheaper for input?
Cohere Command A+ is cheaper at $0.80 per million input tokens, against $2 for Claude Sonnet 5 — roughly 2.5× the price. Estimate both input and output token volume for your workload. These are base rates; Claude Sonnet 5: Standard $2/$10 per MTok with no long-context surcharge. Cache reads $0.20; 5-minute writes $2.50 and 1-hour writes $4. Batch $1/$5. US-only inference adds 10% where supported. Batch supports 300K output with output-300k-2026-03-24; standard stays 128K. Knowledge cutoff Jan 2026; retirement not sooner than June 30, 2027. Cohere Command A+: Azure's current USD retail feed lists Command A Plus public-cloud Global at $0.80/$3.20 per MTok and data-zone meters at $0.88/$3.52. US Government Global is $1.00/$4.00 and data-zone $1.10/$4.40. These are Azure rates, not Cohere-direct prices. Cohere's A+ page says trial and production keys are free until rate limits; general paid-key documentation and production-access requirements differ. Standard Vault lists A+ L/XL at $17.50/$32.50 per instance-hour, typically via a waitlist; encrypted beta design-partner access is separately scoped.
Is Claude Sonnet 5 or Cohere Command A+ cheaper for output?
Cohere Command A+ is cheaper at $3.20 per million output tokens, against $10 for Claude Sonnet 5 — roughly 3.1× the price. Estimate both input and output token volume for your workload. These are base rates; Claude Sonnet 5: Standard $2/$10 per MTok with no long-context surcharge. Cache reads $0.20; 5-minute writes $2.50 and 1-hour writes $4. Batch $1/$5. US-only inference adds 10% where supported. Batch supports 300K output with output-300k-2026-03-24; standard stays 128K. Knowledge cutoff Jan 2026; retirement not sooner than June 30, 2027. Cohere Command A+: Azure's current USD retail feed lists Command A Plus public-cloud Global at $0.80/$3.20 per MTok and data-zone meters at $0.88/$3.52. US Government Global is $1.00/$4.00 and data-zone $1.10/$4.40. These are Azure rates, not Cohere-direct prices. Cohere's A+ page says trial and production keys are free until rate limits; general paid-key documentation and production-access requirements differ. Standard Vault lists A+ L/XL at $17.50/$32.50 per instance-hour, typically via a waitlist; encrypted beta design-partner access is separately scoped.
Which has the larger context window, Claude Sonnet 5 or Cohere Command A+?
Claude Sonnet 5 accepts 1M tokens against 128K for Cohere Command A+. This only matters if you routinely send very long documents or large codebases.
Should I use Claude Sonnet 5 or Cohere Command A+?
Both are classified in our balanced tier; this editorial grouping does not imply equal capability. Claude Sonnet 5 is a candidate for everyday generation; Cohere Command A+ is a candidate for open-weight deployments. Compare accuracy, tool reliability, latency and cost on representative tasks.
Can I self-host Claude Sonnet 5 or Cohere Command A+?
Cohere Command A+ publishes open weights, but self-hosting and third-party provider access depend on the licence, hardware, serving support, and availability. Claude Sonnet 5 is a closed model whose supported access paths are controlled by its provider.

Next step

Choosing between them

The verified figures that separate this pair, computed from the catalog rather than restated boilerplate.

  • Input price: Cohere Command A+ costs $0.80 per 1M tokens versus $2 for Claude Sonnet 5 — a 2.5x difference at the headline tier.
  • Context: Claude Sonnet 5 takes 1M against 128K for Cohere Command A+ — only decisive if your prompts approach the smaller window.
  • Deployment: Cohere Command A+ publishes weights you can self-host; the other is API-only.
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