Claude Sonnet 5 vs Extend
A raw model that outscores a dedicated product by eleven points, against a dedicated product with a far better free tier and everything Claude lacks. Claude wins on accuracy almost everywhere except scanned and handwritten single pages, where Extend is better. Extend wins on being a product: Studio, evaluations, workflows, webhooks, and a test environment on a free tier with no card.
The Claude row is a general model with a file and a field list and nothing else. Extend is a dedicated platform with a polished dashboard and a five-API surface. In our benchmark the model came second and the platform fourth. The eleven-point gap isn't close, but it also isn't where a buyer might expect it.
Claude leads on length and language. On multi-page statements and filings it was comfortably ahead. On long catalogs and directories it kept most of the entries while Extend lost most of them, and on non-English documents it was sixteen points clear. Only DocuPipe was ahead of it on that material. Extend leads on the messy single page: scanned images, photographed receipts, handwritten forms, and rotated pages, where it was among the best in the field and Claude, with no reading stage in front of it, fell well below its own average.
On resilience Extend is the simpler system, with one mode and nothing to tune, but its long-document cliff is steep and silent, and it stumbled on a plain export file. Claude has nothing to tune either and returned nothing empty, but badly misread a few ordinary forms with no warning. We'd trust Claude further across an unpredictable corpus, and Extend further on a scanner feed.
On price both are cheap and honest. Claude is a few cents a page on token billing. Extend is about six cents pay-as-you-go with 10,000 free credits and no minimum, five cents on its $500 Scale plan. Claude's price leaves out the product. Extend's includes it.
And Extend's product is the strongest developer experience among the specialized systems we looked at. Studio to build and test processors, an evaluation suite for regression-testing extraction before you ship a change, workflows, run and request logs, a review agent, webhooks with delivery logs, a test environment, and SDKs in Python, TypeScript, Java, and Go, all on the free tier. Claude offers native PDF input, a Files API, batch mode, structured outputs, and citations through an excellent general API, and nothing document-specific: no dashboard, webhooks, review, or retention controls. On compliance Extend's gaps are a HIPAA BAA sold as an add-on and no SOC 2 stated on its pricing page. Claude's is that the platform's certifications cover the API and nothing you build around it.
So Claude if your documents are printed and varied and you have a pipeline to put it in. Extend if your documents come off a scanner or phone one page at a time, or if you want to be in production this week on a free tier with everything switched on.
Printed, left-to-right documents of varied length, non-English corpora, and teams with their own pipeline who want the higher accuracy.
Scanned, photographed, or handwritten single pages, and teams that want a complete product with evaluation tooling and webhooks without building anything.
How it scores, area by area
The accuracy score comes from the benchmark. Every other score is ours, with the reason written next to it. We use the same weights on every review and comparison.
| Area | Claude Sonnet 5 | Extend |
|---|---|---|
| Accuracy35% of total | 9.2Ranked 2nd of 8 systems on the benchmark. | 8.0Ranked 4th of 8 systems on the benchmark. |
| Resilience15% of total | 7.0No settings to tune and nothing returned empty, but a few ordinary forms came back badly misread with no warning, and there is no layout stage to catch them. | 5.0One mode and no tuning, but a hard cliff on long documents and one odd miss on a plain export file, all silent. |
| Price15% of total | 9.0$2 and $10 per million tokens; a few cents per page at most. | 7.0About $0.06 per page pay-as-you-go, $0.05 on the $500 Scale plan, no minimum, and a generous free tier. |
| Getting started10% of total | 3.0No document product. You build upload, review and results tooling yourself. | 9.0Studio, evaluation suite, workflows and a test environment on a free tier of 10,000 credits with no card; schemas are authored by hand in Studio. |
| API and integration10% of total | 5.0Excellent general SDKs, native PDF input, a Files API, batch mode and structured outputs; no document jobs, webhooks or pipeline. | 9.0Webhooks with delivery logs, five APIs, four SDKs, request logs and a test environment, all on the free tier. |
| Data control7.5% of total | 5.0Platform policy only; zero retention for eligible organisations. Nothing document-specific. | 7.0Zero and custom retention policies offered; custom agreements on Scale. |
| Compliance7.5% of total | 6.0Platform certifications apply to the API; your pipeline is your responsibility. | 5.0HIPAA BAA is a paid add-on; SOC 2 not stated on the pricing page. |
| Overallweighted | 7.2weighted score out of 10 | 7.3weighted score out of 10 |
How each area is scored
- Accuracy (35%). The benchmark result, on a 0 to 10 scale.
- Resilience (15%). Does it just work? Fewer modes to choose, no tuning to reach the ranked result, no runs that fail outright, and no documents that come back quietly empty. Informed by the benchmark, judged by us.
- Price (15%). Published cost per page for parse plus extraction, cheapest scoring highest. Unpublished pricing is marked down.
- Getting started (10%). How far you get without a sales call: a dashboard, a free tier with no card, help authoring schemas, a test environment.
- API and integration (10%). Webhooks and which tier they are on, SDKs, no-code connectors, whether the API is built around document jobs at all.
- Data control (7.5%). Deletion controls, scheduled retention, zero-retention availability and on which tier, choice of region.
- Compliance (7.5%). Certifications stated on public pages: SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA with a BAA, GDPR, private deployment options.
By document type
Average accuracy on each group of benchmark documents, both systems on the same files. Every document and score is on the evidence page.
| Document type | Claude Sonnet 5 | Extend |
|---|---|---|
| Statements, filings, reports2 to 5 pages · 21 documents | 92.3% Good | 86.7% Good |
| Short forms, invoices, receiptsone page · 30 documents | 91.7% Good | 88.8% Good |
| Long registers, catalogs, directories6 pages and up · 21 documents | 91.3% Good | 61.7% Mixed |
| Non-English documents12 languages · 25 documents | 85.2% Good | 69.3% Mixed |
| Scans and photosimages, not PDFs · 7 documents | 80.1% Good | 86.9% Good |
Price, product, and policies
Full reviews: Claude Sonnet 5, Extend.
| Claude Sonnet 5 | Extend | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Per token through the Anthropic API. No document-specific product or plan. | Credits. Extraction costs 3 credits per page plus 2 for the automatic parse, so 5 credits per page end to end. |
| Entry price | $2 per million input tokens, $10 per million output tokens. | Pay-as-you-go is free to start with 10,000 credits, then $0.0125 per credit. Scale is $500/month for 50,000 credits at $0.01 per additional credit. |
| Cost per page | Depends on page size and how much you ask it to return; typically a fraction of a cent to a few cents per page. | About $0.06 per page pay-as-you-go, $0.05 on Scale. |
| Free tier | No ongoing free tier for API use. | Yes. 10,000 credits, roughly 2,000 pages, on signup. |
| Pay as you go | Yes. Pure usage billing. | Yes. |
| Dashboard | No document product. A console workbench for prompts; upload, review and results tooling is yours to build. | Yes. Studio to build and test processors, an Evaluation suite for regression testing, Workflows that chain classify, split and extract, run logs, a Review Agent and human review, and a built-in test environment. |
| Webhooks | None for document jobs. You run the pipeline. | Yes, with webhook endpoint and delivery logs in the dashboard. |
| API and SDKs | Official SDKs in Python, TypeScript, Java, Go, Ruby, C# and PHP. PDF input up to 600 pages per request, a Files API, batch processing at reduced cost, structured outputs and citations. | Python, TypeScript, Java, Go and REST on a date-versioned API. Parse, Extract, Classify, Split and Edit APIs; API request logs in the dashboard. |
| Data retention | Governed by Anthropic's API data policies; zero-retention arrangements exist for eligible organizations. Nothing document-specific. | Zero and custom data retention policies offered; custom retention agreements on Scale and up. |
| Compliance | Anthropic's platform certifications apply to the API; your pipeline around it is your responsibility. | HIPAA BAA as a paid add-on on Scale. SOC 2 not stated on the pricing page. |
We checked these against the vendors' own pricing and documentation pages on 2026-09-11. Sources: Claude Sonnet 5: platform.claude.com; Extend: www.extend.ai, docs.extend.ai. Prices change, so confirm before you budget.
Frequently asked
Is Claude more accurate than Extend?
Yes, overall: 91.73% to 80.28% in our benchmark. Extend was ahead on scanned, photographed, and handwritten single pages. Claude was well ahead on multi-page, long, and non-English documents.
Why choose Extend over Claude if Claude scores higher?
Because Extend is a product and Claude is a model. Extend's free tier includes Studio, an evaluation suite, workflows, webhooks, and a test environment. With Claude you build all of that yourself.
Scores are macro-average field accuracy from the DocuBench 0.2.0, 72-document run. Every document, answer key, and raw extraction is open in the explorer; the scoring rules are on the methodology page, and the replication kit re-runs the scorer. A document a system could not process scores zero rather than being dropped.