I feel like many of the “as good as opus” crowd would achieve the same with sonnet tbh. Actually reaching the ceiling of what Opus can do is maybe 10% of tasks, the rest is wasting compute on a too-strong model they default to for whatever they are doing. Hence they see little drop in output quality when trying out smaller open models.
It is a price signalling problem both in the API and the subscriptions.
Difference between $3/MTok and $5/MTok does not reflect the capability difference. Similarly the subscriptions have extra Opus specific allowances. I prefer Sonnet for most tasks it is good enough, but sometimes I am forced to use Opus because am out of Sonnet for the week. It feels like Opus is unwanted second option.
If they priced Sonnet closer to $1/MTok like other models it would signal value of Opus better.
