Anthropic Retires Claude Haiku 4.5 from Consumer Selectors
Anthropic announced that Claude Haiku 4.5 will be removed from consumer-facing model selectors on October 29, automatically transitioning users to the newer Haiku 5.5. Existing conversation histories will be preserved and automatically continued using the newer model. This routine update streamlines the consumer experience by shifting users to a significantly cheaper and more capable successor model. Enterprise and API users remain unaffected, ensuring continuity for production workloads. Haiku 5.5 features a 1-million-token context window, adjustable reasoning levels, and runs at roughly 75% lower average operating costs than Haiku 4.5. Availability in Claude Code, Team, Enterprise, and API tiers remains completely unchanged.
## BACKGROUND
A context window determines the maximum amount of text, measured in tokens, that a large language model can process and remember in a single request. Anthropic provides various model tiers like Haiku for lightweight tasks, alongside agentic tools such as Claude Cowork for non-programmers.