Anthropic releases Haiku 5.5, about 75% cheaper to run
Haiku 5.5 is out at roughly 75% lower running cost than the previous Haiku, and Anthropic suggests using it as a subagent for Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5.5 to compress tool outputs and handle routing.
Haiku 5.5 just shipped. About 75% cheaper to run than the last Haiku. It changes the Agent world forever. Most agents still run one big model for everything. Haiku 5.5 makes the split worth doing. The big model decides, and the small model carries the volume. Anthropic is pitching exactly this pairing: Haiku as a subagent for Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5.5. What it actually changes for your agent: Shrink tool outputs before the big model sees them. In my agent receipt, tool outputs were 66% of the bill. A Haiku subagent can condense a 3,000-token result to a few hundred before Opus re-reads it on every turn after. Routing gets almost free. "Which tool, which agent, done yet?" can run on the cheapest model in the family. Live agents become practical. Haiku 5.5 is fast enough for customer support and browser use, where latency used to rule out a capable model. Opus finally gets to do only Opus work. One thing to check: "75% cheaper" is an average. Run your own workload before you move everything over. Wrote the full breakdown on agents, loops, and graphs for anyone building one below.
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