# Claude Sonnet 854 Hacker News commenters recommended Claude Sonnet and 586 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 13 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 0.5 years (46 owners). **Verdict:** A capable coding model that has improved noticeably with each version and is faster and cheaper than Opus, though it needs careful supervision and usage limits bite. ## Why people recommend it - Strong for everyday coding (7 comments): "Took a lot of guidance both in terms of making it test its own code and architectural/style decisions and I also use Sonnet, but it got there." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46516252)) "Felt Sonnet/Opus was much better at figuring out whats wrong with the current React implementation and fixing it than it was with React Native" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47467803)) "Sonnet works much better (compared to Opus) for tasks I want to be in control of architecture and just need a faster code input" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49050317)) - Big gains between versions (5 comments): "I'm finding the difference just between Sonnet 4 and Sonnet 4.5 to be meaningful in terms of the complexity of tasks I'm willing to use them for." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45821693)) "I noticed a step change in what was possible here around Claude Sonnet 3.7 in terms of being able to analyze my own unpublished work" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46610189)) "Look at Sonnet 3.5 -> 3.7 -> 4.5 -> Opus 4.5; that was 17 months of development and the leaps in performance are quite impressive." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46457602)) - Faster and cheaper than Opus (5 comments): "providing a detailed plan, and even then the implementation might take 10x the amount of time it'd take for sonnet or Gemini 3 to crunch through the plan" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48047836)) "Sonnet works much better (compared to Opus) for tasks I want to be in control of architecture and just need a faster code input" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49050317)) "you can fire off a Sonnet agent at low-mid reasoning at it'll be cheaper than if you had Opus do that summarization itself" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49893014)) - Better instruction following (2 comments): "Sonnet 4.6 follows instructions much better than 4.5 and it generates code much closer to our already in-place production code" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47349778)) "The claim about improved instruction following is the most important line in the announcement if you're building on the API." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47052278)) ## What people warn about - Needs babysitting and careful guidance (4 comments): "it usually works very well if you have well defined inputs and outputs, I much prefer it over writing tests manually, but you have to be very careful" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46312721)) "Took a lot of guidance both in terms of making it test its own code and architectural/style decisions and I also use Sonnet, but it got there." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46516252)) "have experience with Sonnet 4.5, and it's only marginally better than the previous versions IME. It still often wastes my time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45785901)) - Struggles with complex work (3 comments): "3.7 was not all that great." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46877225)) "Sonnet's code worked, as long as you didn't touch any audio settings, because then it exploded with spectacular kernel panics." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47924324)) "past 8 hours with the Sonnet 4.5 version I hit the "vibe limit" where it becomes easier to just write/edit the code yourself" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48472476)) - Restrictive usage limits and billing (4 comments): "Claude has one of the best interfaces with connectors, skills, and plugins galore, but the model and limits are restrictive on the free tier." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49000171)) "Anthropic literally don't allow you to use the 1M context anymore on Sonnet and Opus 4.6 without it being billed as extra usage immediately." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47269133)) "It goes into plan mode and/or heavy multiple agent for any reasons, and hundred thousands of tokens are used within a few minutes." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47052311)) - Overcautious safety refusals (3 comments): "I have been trying to convince the safe guards that analyzing a C++ compiler from 2003 isn't particularly relevant to modern cybersecurity." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49882182)) "refused to give me instructions on taking the life of another when I asked something like - "how do I kill a running process by name?"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47370288)) "Anthropic's decision to restrict security research on even Sonnet makes that gap (and thus an attackers opportunity) even larger." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48784861)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Claude Opus](https://hackerapproved.com/p/claude-opus.md): 3331 recommend - [OpenAI GPT](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gpt-5-5.md): 1205 recommend - [DeepSeek V4 Flash](https://hackerapproved.com/p/deepseek-v4-flash.md): 828 recommend - [Fable](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fable.md): 823 recommend - [Claude Fable 5](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fable-5.md): 774 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://claude.ai/login) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Claude Sonnet", https://hackerapproved.com/p/claude-sonnet/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).