Anthropic Releases Claude Sonnet 4.6 with Frontier Coding and Agent Performance
Narrative
Anthropic launches Claude Sonnet 4.6, its latest mid-tier model targeting coding, agentic workflows, and professional use at scale. The update brings improved reasoning and substantially stronger coding benchmarks, alongside a doubled free-tier message limit. Available immediately across all plans, Claude Code, Cowork, API, and major cloud platforms including AWS Bedrock.
Reality
Released February 17, 2026, twelve days after Opus 4.6. Benchmarks show notable gains in SWE-Bench Verified and agentic task completion. Free tier limits doubled. Independent evaluations still pending at time of entry. System card published alongside release with safety evaluation details.
Implication
Anthropic releases two major models in twelve days, shifting from milestone releases to continuous iteration. Sonnet 4.6 targets mid-tier accessibility over frontier performance while doubling free tier limits. Strengthens coding and agent positioning against OpenAI and Moonshot as enterprise integrations via Infosys and AWS Bedrock expand distribution.