---
id: "2024-03-04-claude-3"
url: "https://postcutoff.com/e/2024-03-04-claude-3/"
as_of: "2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00"
date: "2024-03-04"
date_precision: day
category: model-release
importance: 4
confidence: high
status: [Confirmed]
sources: 2
editor: human editor
human_review: null
version: "2026-10-04"
---

As of: 2026-11-13 13:49 CET.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code), with a human editor. How we work: https://postcutoff.com/about/
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/e/2024-03-04-claude-3/

# Anthropic launches the Claude 3 family (Opus, Sonnet, Haiku)

Claude 3 Opus, Sonnet and Haiku introduced vision and a 200K context window; Anthropic reported that Opus outperformed GPT-4 on most common benchmarks, making it the first model widely seen as matching or beating GPT-4.

## Key facts
- Released 4 March 2024 (Haiku followed on 13 March)
- Three tiers: Opus (most capable), Sonnet, Haiku (fastest)
- 200K-token context window; image input
- Opus priced at $15 / $75 per million input/output tokens

## What happened

Anthropic released a three-tier family across capability and cost, available in claude.ai and via API, Amazon Bedrock and Google Cloud Vertex AI.

## Why it matters

Ended GPT-4's year-long uncontested lead and established the Opus/Sonnet/Haiku naming used thereafter.

## Your AI and this story

- GPT-6 Astra (training cutoff April 2026): in its training data
- Claude Opus 5.5 (training cutoff June 2026): in its training data
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen (training cutoff March 2026): in its training data
- Grok 4.7 (training cutoff May 2026): in its training data

## Sources

1. [Introducing the next generation of Claude (Anthropic)](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-3-family) (anthropic.com, official)
2. [Claude 3 Model Card (PDF)](https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/de8ba9b01c9ab7cbabf5c33b80b7bbc618857627/Model_Card_Claude_3.pdf) (www-cdn.anthropic.com, docs)

## Changes

- 2026-09-29 (filed): Created

## Related

- 2024-06-20: [Claude 3.5 Sonnet launches with Artifacts](https://postcutoff.com/e/2024-06-20-claude-3-5-sonnet/index.md)
- 2023-07-11: [Anthropic releases Claude 2 with public claude.ai access](https://postcutoff.com/e/2023-07-11-claude-2/index.md)