The Claude price hike you budgeted for isn't happening

Hook

Next Tuesday your Sonnet 5 bill was scheduled to jump 50%. Anthropic deleted the increase instead.

The news

When Claude Sonnet 5 launched in June, its $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output was labeled introductory pricing through August 31, with a standard $3/$15 rate scheduled for September 1. On August 10 Anthropic cancelled the jump: the pricing docs now state the launch rate "is now the standard price." No promo window, no end date; $2/$10 is just what Sonnet 5 costs.

On your desk

If the September increase is sitting in a budget line, a vendor quote, or a build-vs-buy spreadsheet anywhere in your company, it's now fiction. And it isn't an isolated act of generosity: OpenAI cut its flagship Sol by 20-33% six days earlier. Two frontier labs moved prices this month, and neither direction was up. Sonnet 5 is the workhorse tier, the model most day-to-day Claude work actually runs through; if you want the map of what sits above it, start with Claude Opus 5.

What you should do next

Delete the September 1 increase from any AI budget that carried it, and if a vendor priced the hike into a quote, ask them to delete it too.