Using Claude Sonnet 4.6 on GCP Vertex AI

Implementation guide · Claude 4.6 · Anthropic

Serverless

GCP Vertex AI exposes Claude Sonnet 4.6 through model ID claude-sonnet-4-6. Use the setup steps, sourced pricing, capabilities, and official provider links below to validate this route before deployment.

Last refreshed 2026-07-26. Next refresh: weekly.

Quick Start

  1. 1
    Create an account at GCP Vertex AI and generate an API key.
  2. 2
    Use the GCP Vertex AI SDK or REST API to call claude-sonnet-4-6 — see the documentation for request format.
  3. 3
    You'll be billed $3.00/1M input, $15.00/1M output tokens. See full pricing.

Code Examples

Install
pip install google-cloud-aiplatform
API key
GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT
Model ID
claude-sonnet-4-6

For Google-published models use the model name directly, e.g. "gemini-2.0-flash-001". For third-party publishers (Anthropic, Meta, etc.) use the full publisher path, e.g. "publishers/anthropic/models/claude-3-5-sonnet-v2@20241022".

import os
import vertexai
from vertexai.generative_models import GenerativeModel

# Reads GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT from env; authenticates via Application Default Credentials
vertexai.init(project=os.environ["GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT"], location="us-central1")
model = GenerativeModel("claude-sonnet-4-6")
response = model.generate_content("Hello")
print(response.text)

Pricing on GCP Vertex AI

TypePrice (per 1M)
Input tokens$3.00
Output tokens$15.00

Capabilities

VisionMultimodalReasoningJSON / Tool useStructured OutputsCode ExecutionPrompt CachingBatch API

About Claude Sonnet 4.6

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is Anthropic's best combination of speed and intelligence. Proprietary decoder-only model with 1M-token context, 64K max output, multimodal vision, extended thinking, and function calling. Available via Anthropic API, AWS Bedrock, GCP Vertex AI, and OpenRouter at $3/1M input and $15/1M output tokens.

Model Specs

Released2026-02-17
Context1m
ArchitectureDecoder Only
Knowledge cutoff2025-08

Provider

GCP Vertex AI

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Mountain View, California, United States