Haiku 5.5 ships: Anthropic's 5.5 line is complete, and the budget tier finally answers
From the AI digest for 2026-10-09
What happened: Anthropic launched Claude Haiku 5.5 (X announcement ~2:00 PM ET Oct 7): "the cheapest, fastest, and most capable small model we've ever released" — ~75% less to run than Haiku 4.5 on average, 10× cheaper under 100K tokens; pitched for computer use, workflows and API. Follow-through coverage (MSN syndication, Oct 9): a claimed 72.4% on OSWorld 2.1 matching the human baseline at "90% lower input pricing," with the sub-agent framing ("viable sub-agent at human-level computer use").
What's genuinely new: the Sep 22 "coming weeks" promise is complete — Sonnet 5.5 landed Sep 28 (day 6), Haiku 5.5 at day 15 (ledger logged, slip past the Oct 6 review-by noted). The band-shape fact from Sep 26 ("Anthropic has no Luna-class budget model") now has an answer, though Haiku 5.5's absolute price point vs GPT-6 Luna ($0.10/$0.50) and GLM Flash ($0.15/$0.50) isn't yet captured as list rates in our record. On X the consolidation frame ("Anthropic and OpenAI now really just focus on 2 models each") is circulating.
Watch: the system card (sandbox-escape stats, computer-use claims), AA's independent number — Sonnet 5.5's is still owed too — and where Haiku 5.5 lands in the GLM Flash > DeepSeek Flash > Luna band ranking.
Links: Anthropic on X (announcement stream; primary page not yet in our feed) · MSN syndication