For a standard workflow of 2,000 total tokens, 1,000 runs cost $15.90 using Claude 3.5 Sonnet v2. The older Claude 3.5 Sonnet model costs $12.00 for the same volume, while the base Claude API and Platform tiers are significantly cheaper at $2.88 per 1,000 workflows.
Finance and IT leaders should note that these costs scale directly with token volume. Because output tokens are priced higher than input tokens—especially on the Sonnet v2 model—the specific ratio of generation to prompt length will dictate the final budget requirements for high-volume deployments.
What Anthropic API costs per 1,000 workflows
Assumption (stated, adjustable): each workflow run uses 1,500 input tokens and 500 output tokens.
| Model |
Input $/1M |
Output $/1M |
Cost per workflow |
Cost per 1,000 workflows |
| Claude Platform |
$0.1 |
$5 |
$0.0027 |
$2.65 |
| Claude API |
$0.25 |
$5 |
$0.0029 |
$2.88 |
| Anthropic Claude 3.5 Sonnet v2 |
$0.6 |
$30 |
$0.0159 |
$15.90 |
| Anthropic Claude 3.5 Sonnet |
$3 |
$15 |
$0.0120 |
$12 |
| Claude Platform Legacy |
$3 |
$15 |
$0.0120 |
$12 |
Cost per workflow = (input tokens x input price + output tokens x output price) ÷ 1,000,000, using verified official per-token prices.
How do model choices impact the per-workflow budget?
Selecting the appropriate model involves a trade-off between capability and cost. While the Claude API tier costs only $2.88 per 1,000 workflows, moving to Claude 3.5 Sonnet v2 increases the cost to $15.90. This represents a more than five-fold increase in spend that must be justified by the complexity of the task or the quality of the output.
Why is the input/output ratio critical for procurement?
The pricing structure for Anthropic models heavily weights output tokens. In the case of Claude 3.5 Sonnet v2, output tokens cost $30 per million compared to $0.60 per million for input. If your workflows are generation-heavy, the cost per 1,000 runs will rise faster than workflows focused on processing large amounts of existing data.
To determine if this API spend is efficient, organizations must move beyond tracking token costs to measuring the displacement of manual labor. By using NetLift, teams can compare the $15.90 spent per 1,000 workflows against the baseline cost of employee hours saved, providing a clear net return on AI adoption rather than just a line item in the IT budget.
Sources
All pricing on this page comes from official vendor pages: