Why Sonnet 4.6 Is Better: The Vibe, The Speed, The Price
Dillip Chowdary
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February 15, 2026 — In the AI wars, "better" is subjective. But with Sonnet 4.6, Anthropic has captured something elusive: the perfect "Engineering Vibe." Here is why developers are mass-migrating from GPT-5 Turbo.
The "No-Fluff" Factor
GPT models have a tendency to lecture. Ask for a Python script, and you get a safety warning, an introduction, the code, and a summary. Sonnet 4.6 just gives you the code. This reduction in friction saves mental energy over hundreds of interactions a day.
Latency is Functionality
At 450ms time-to-first-token, Sonnet 4.6 feels instantaneous. This speed changes how you use it—it becomes an autocomplete for your thoughts rather than a consultant you have to wait for.
The Price/Performance Ratio
At $3 per million tokens, it is significantly cheaper than OpenAI's mid-tier offerings while outperforming them on the SWE-bench verified leaderboard. It is the first "Intelligence Commodity" that doesn't feel like a compromise.
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