Summary
On July 1, 2026 (Claude Code v2.1.197) Anthropic made Claude Sonnet 5 the default model in Claude Code, pairing a native 1M-token context window with introductory pricing of $2/$10 per million tokens through August 31, 2026.
What changed
Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 5 on June 30 as its most agentic Sonnet model, then made it the Claude Code default on July 1 (v2.1.197) with a native 1M-token context window and promotional pricing of $2/$10 per million tokens through August 31 (rising to $3/$15 after).
Why it matters
Making a cheaper, long-context model the default coding agent lowers the cost of long agentic sessions and large-repo context, directly pressuring the per-token economics of rival coding models and reinforcing Claude Code's position as a reference agentic CLI.
Evidence excerpt
Claude Sonnet 5 became the default model in Claude Code with a native 1M-token context window and promotional pricing of $2/$10 per million tokens through August 31.