# Claude 3 Haiku API Rate Limits, Pricing & Performance (July 2026)

- Tool: AI API Limits & Performance Matrix
- Last updated: July 2026

## TL;DR

Claude 3 Haiku was officially deprecated on March 2, 2026 and is not recommended for new projects. Its successor, Claude Haiku 4.5 (claude-haiku-4-5), is Anthropic's current low-cost speed model at $1.00 input / $5.00 output per MTok with 200K token context. Scale tier reaches ~4M ITPM — the highest throughput ceiling in Anthropic's lineup, designed for routing and classification workloads.

## Frequently asked questions

### Is Claude 3 Haiku deprecated?

Yes. Claude 3 Haiku was officially deprecated on March 2, 2026. New projects should not use claude-3-haiku-* API strings. The recommended replacement is Claude Haiku 4.5 (claude-haiku-4-5) — cheaper, with 200K context and no ITPM exception on cache reads. As of July 10, 2026, no hard EOL date has been announced, but the model is not recommended.

### What is the difference between Claude 3 Haiku and Haiku 4.5?

Claude 3 Haiku is deprecated (March 2, 2026). Haiku 4.5 (claude-haiku-4-5) is the current GA model, cheaper at $1.00/$5.00 per MTok, with 200K context. Critically, unlike Haiku 3.5 (a separate intermediate model that carried a † exception), Haiku 4.5 cache reads do NOT count toward ITPM — a significant throughput improvement for caching-heavy workflows.

### How do I increase Claude Haiku 4.5 rate limits?

Rate limits increase automatically: ~$40 cumulative spend promotes to Build; ~$200 cumulative unlocks Scale (~4,000 RPM / ~4M ITPM — the highest Anthropic ITPM ceiling, per third-party trackers). Above Scale, contact Anthropic sales for Custom tier. Monitor at platform.claude.com/settings/limits or query GET /v1/rate-limits programmatically.

### Is the Claude Haiku 4.5 API free?

No. There is no free tier. All token usage is billed from the Start tier. Standard pricing is $1.00 input / $5.00 output per MTok — Anthropic's lowest published rate. Batch API offers 50% off at $0.50/$2.50 per MTok.

### How does Claude Haiku 4.5 compare to Gemini 2.5 Flash pricing?

Gemini 2.5 Flash is cheaper on raw token cost at approximately $0.30 input / $2.50 output per MTok, versus Haiku 4.5 at $1.00/$5.00. Haiku 4.5 offers Anthropic's safety/trust ecosystem and a very high ITPM ceiling (~4M at Scale). Gemini 2.5 Flash has a 1M context window versus Haiku's 200K. Choose based on provider compliance requirements and whether your workload fits within Haiku's 200K context.

### Do cache reads count toward Claude Haiku 4.5 ITPM limits?

No — cache reads do NOT count toward ITPM for Haiku 4.5. This is an important distinction from the legacy Haiku 3.5 model, which carried a † exception where cache reads DID count toward ITPM. If you are migrating from Haiku 3.5, your effective ITPM throughput should increase significantly on Haiku 4.5 with identical caching patterns.

### What does Claude API rate_limit_error mean for Haiku?

rate_limit_error (HTTP 429) on Haiku means you hit RPM, ITPM, or OTPM limits. High-frequency routing and classification use cases are most likely to hit RPM acceleration limits. Check anthropic-ratelimit-requests-remaining vs anthropic-ratelimit-tokens-remaining to identify which dimension hit. Read retry-after for seconds to wait. For persistent RPM issues, implement a client-side token-bucket at ~80% of your tier RPM ceiling.

### How can I reduce Claude API costs using model routing?

The primary pattern for multi-tier Anthropic setups: use Haiku 4.5 ($1/$5 per MTok) for routing, classification, summarization, and filtering. Escalate to Sonnet 5 ($2/$10 intro) for generation tasks requiring moderate reasoning, and Opus 4.8 ($5/$25) only for tasks requiring maximum reasoning depth. Haiku is 5× cheaper than Opus on input. RapidDev helps teams design and implement model routing architectures to reduce Anthropic API spend — reach out at rapidevelopers.com/contact for a free scoping call.

### What is the Haiku 4.5 context window and when does it matter?

Claude Haiku 4.5 has a 200K token context window, compared to 1M for Sonnet 5 and Opus 4.8. For most classification, routing, and summarization tasks, 200K is more than sufficient. When processing very long documents, full conversation histories, or large codebases that exceed 200K tokens, route to Sonnet 5 or Opus 4.8. Haiku 4.5 does not carry any long-context surcharge — the 200K window is available at the flat $1/$5 rate.

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Source: https://www.rapidevelopers.com/ai-api-limits-performance-matrix/claude-3-haiku
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