Claude Haiku 4.5 - My Favorite AI Model for GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio 2026

Anthropic's Claude models produce cleaner code with fewer bugs, making them a strong default for GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio 2026. The free models are capable but 2–3x slower, which kills your flow. Claude Haiku 4.5 — at one-third the cost of Sonnet — handles 80% of daily coding tasks at premium speed. Use it as your baseline, and only switch up when the task demands it.