Claude Sonnet 3.6 (2022-10-22) vs Claude 3.7 Thinking Sonnet
Compare Claude Sonnet 3.6 (2022-10-22) and Claude 3.7 Thinking Sonnet, both from Anthropic, in 22 community votes, claude 3.7 thinking sonnet wins 94% of head-to-head duels, context windows of 200K vs 200K, tested across 54 shared challenges. Updated May 2026.
Which is better, Claude Sonnet 3.6 (2022-10-22) or Claude 3.7 Thinking Sonnet?
Claude 3.7 Thinking Sonnet is the better choice overall, winning 94% of 22 blind community votes on Rival. Claude Sonnet 3.6 (2022-10-22) costs $3/M input tokens vs $6/M for Claude 3.7 Thinking Sonnet. Context windows: 200K vs 200K tokens. Compare their real outputs side by side below.
Key Differences Between Claude Sonnet 3.6 (2022-10-22) and Claude 3.7 Thinking Sonnet
Claude Sonnet 3.6 (2022-10-22) is made by anthropic while Claude 3.7 Thinking Sonnet is from anthropic. Claude Sonnet 3.6 (2022-10-22) has a 200K token context window compared to Claude 3.7 Thinking Sonnet's 200K. On pricing, Claude Sonnet 3.6 (2022-10-22) costs $3/M input tokens vs $6/M for Claude 3.7 Thinking Sonnet. In community voting, In 22 community votes, Claude 3.7 Thinking Sonnet wins 94% of head-to-head duels.
In 22 community votes, Claude 3.7 Thinking Sonnet wins 94% of head-to-head duels. Claude 3.7 Thinking Sonnet leads in Reasoning, Web Design, Image Generation. Based on blind community voting from the Rival open dataset of 22+ human preference judgments for this pair.
Per 1M tokens
Claude Sonnet 3.6 (2022-10-22) is cheaper on both — 2.0× input, 2.0× output
Pick Claude 3.7 Thinking Sonnet. In 22 blind votes, Claude 3.7 Thinking Sonnet wins 94% of the time. That's not luck.
Claude 3.7 Thinking Sonnet particularly excels in Web Design, Image Generation, Conversation.
Style Comparison
Claude 3.7 Thinking Sonnet uses 32.2x more headings
