Which Claude AI model should you use?

Think of the 4 models as helpers in a kingdom. Small, fast helpers handle small, fast jobs. Big, powerful helpers handle big, hard jobs. You would not send a wizard to deliver a letter, and you would not send a sprite to win a war. Pick the helper that fits the job.

The 4 helpers at a glance

The 3-second test

Ask these in order. Stop at the first yes.

1. 🪄 Handing off a giant, multi-step job to run on its own? Send the 👑 Grandmaster (Fable 5).
2. 🧠 A hard, high-stakes decision that is costly to get wrong? Send the 🧙 Wizard (Opus 4.8).
3. ✍️ Something a real person will read, where wording matters? Send the 🛡️ Companion (Sonnet 4.6).
4. ⚡ A fast, simple, repetitive task? Send the ⚡ Sprite (Haiku 4.5).

Meet each helper

⚡ Haiku 4.5, the Sprite

A tiny, lightning-fast helper for quick little errands. The cheapest of the four, and almost instant.

Use it for:

• Summarizing emails and long threads
• Cleaning up formatting and turning notes into bullet points
• Sorting, tagging, and categorizing
• Quick fact lookups and short translations

The rule: if the task has one clear right answer and you would not pay a person more than a few dollars to do it, send the Sprite.

Cost: the cheapest. About $0.15 for an hour of normal use.

🛡️ Sonnet 4.6, the Loyal Companion

Your steady everyday sidekick. Fast, smart, and good at almost everything. This is the one to reach for most of the time.

Use it for:

• Writing captions, emails, and content drafts
• Research and summarizing many sources into one
• Brainstorming ideas, names, and angles
• Client work and everyday questions

The rule: if a human will read it and the wording matters, the Companion is your default. It covers around 80% of all tasks.

Cost: still very affordable. About $0.45 for an hour of use.

🧙 Opus 4.8, the Wise Wizard

Summoned for the hard, high-stakes problems. It thinks more deeply, handles messy and unclear questions, and will even push back instead of just agreeing with you.

Use it for:

• Mapping out a 6-month content or launch plan
• Pressure-testing a pricing or business decision
• Designing a multi-step automation or workflow
• Reviewing a contract for hidden risks (a smart first read, not a lawyer)
• Turning rough notes into a full, structured course module

The rule: reach for the Wizard when the answer shapes a real decision and is costly to redo. Not for everyday drafting.

Cost: premium. About $0.75 for an hour of use.

👑 Fable 5, the Grandmaster

New in June 2026. Claude's most powerful model ever made. It stands above even the Wizard, and it is built for huge jobs you hand off completely and walk away from.

What it can actually do:

• Look at a screenshot of a web app and rebuild the working version from the picture alone
• Build a full working app from a single instruction, with no back-and-forth
• Run a code change across a 50-million-line system in one day, work that would take a team over two months by hand
• Work on its own for hours, checking and fixing its own mistakes while you are away

Use it for: the biggest, most technical, multi-step jobs only. It is slower, costs about double the Wizard, and is total overkill for captions, emails, or quick tasks.

Cost: the priciest. About $1.50 for an hour of use.

Good to know: Fable 5 is included on the Claude Pro and Max plans only through June 22, 2026. After that, it needs paid credits.

What does it actually cost?

You do not pay a flat monthly fee for these models when you build with them. You pay for the amount of text the AI reads and writes, measured in tokens.

• A token is just a small chunk of text. Roughly, 100 words is about 130 tokens.
• You pay for what you send in (the reading) and what it writes back (the writing).
• The writing always costs more than the reading, about 5 times more on every model.

Here is the cost of about one hour of normal back-and-forth use:

Note: about 1 hour assumes roughly 30 messages with light context. Heavy document work costs more, simple one-line tasks cost less.

3 mistakes to avoid

1. 💸 Sending the Grandmaster to deliver a letter. Using the most expensive model for captions or quick edits burns money for no real gain. Match the model to the size of the job.
2. 🐢 Forgetting that bigger means slower. The Wizard and Grandmaster think longer. For anything you need fast, the Sprite or Companion wins.
3. 🤔 Overthinking the choice. If you cannot name why a task is unusually hard, the Companion (Sonnet) is almost always the right answer.

Quick recap