AWS adds Claude Haiku 5.5 to Bedrock, the first Haiku with effort controls

Serguey Asael Shinder08 October 2026, 07:161 min read

AWS announced on 7 October that Claude Haiku 5.5 is available on its platform. The announcement describes it as the fastest and most efficient model in the Claude 5.5 family, aimed at subagents and high-volume, cost-sensitive work.

What AWS says about the model.

• Cost: according to Anthropic, it costs around 75% less than Claude Haiku 4.5 for most tasks.
• Capability: a significant step up from Haiku 4.5 across coding, tool use, computer use and agents.
• Effort controls: it is the first Haiku with effort controls, so teams can trade cost against intelligence task by task.
• Intended uses: real-time experiences such as voice agents, live support and in-app assistants, and high-volume workloads.

Two ways to use it on AWS.

1. Amazon Bedrock keeps the data inside AWS infrastructure with regional data residency, and adds AWS-managed features such as Guardrails and Knowledge Bases.
2. Claude Platform on AWS gives direct access to Anthropic's own platform experience from the AWS Console — the same APIs, features and console as working with Anthropic directly — with AWS billing and authentication.

The choice between the two is therefore less about the model than about where the integration lives: Bedrock for teams that want the model inside AWS's managed services and residency guarantees, the Claude Platform route for teams that want Anthropic's native tooling while paying through AWS.

A separate notice the same day announced availability in AWS GovCloud (US).