Anthropic's Sonnet 4.6 is here: How it fares against rivals
Anthropic just rolled out Sonnet 4.6, its latest AI model, on February 17, 2026.
This upgrade is all about making coding and following instructions smoother—and it's now the default for both free and paid users on Anthropic's platform.
The model can now process 1 million tokens at once
Sonnet 4.6 can now handle up to one million tokens at once—so it's way better at processing big code projects or long academic papers than before.
It also scores higher than older versions on key benchmarks like OS World and SWE-Bench, showing off some serious improvements in understanding and problem-solving.
It still lags behind Opus and Gemini models
While Sonnet 4.6 beats most competitors on the ARC-AGI-2 benchmark (with a solid 60.4% score), it still trails behind top-tier models like Opus 4.6, Gemini 3 Deep Think, and GPT 5.2 Pro.
The good news? Sonnet 4.6 is the default model for Free and Pro users on Anthropic's platforms, and Pro access adds priority features—and there's already talk of another update (Haiku) coming soon!