Anthropic's most capable model for demanding professional work, but its steep output cost demands justification.
88
Coding
96
Writing
93
Research
0
Images
8
Value
89
Long Context
Use this when
High-stakes professional work where output quality justifies premium pricing — legal analysis, advanced research synthesis, and complex agentic workflows.
Skip this if
You're building high-volume APIs, need real-time responses, or your tasks are well-handled by mid-tier models like Claude Sonnet 4 or GPT-4.1 Mini.
Pricing
$15.00/1M in
$75.00/1M out
→0%since Jun 2026
Context
200k tokens
Speed
Deliberate
Output pricing at $75/1M tokens is among the highest in the market — nearly 3x GPT-4.1's output cost. Batch API discounts may be available through Anthropic. Context window is 200K but very long prompts at Opus pricing can become extremely expensive quickly. Note: supersedes field lists Claude 4 Haiku, which is likely a data error — Opus 4.1 more logically succeeds Claude Opus 4.
Exceptional instruction-following and nuanced output quality, outperforming Claude Sonnet 4 on complex multi-constraint tasks
200K context window handles full codebases, lengthy legal documents, or book-length manuscripts in a single pass
Superior performance on multi-step reasoning chains and agentic tasks requiring extended planning
Best-in-class prose quality for high-stakes writing such as executive communications, grant proposals, and literary editing
Weaknesses
At $15/$75 per million tokens, it is 5x more expensive than Claude Sonnet 4 and significantly pricier than GPT-4.1 and Gemini 2.5 Pro for comparable tasks
Deliberate inference speed makes it poorly suited for real-time applications or high-volume, low-latency pipelines
No native image generation capability despite multimodal input support
Real-world use cases
What people actually use Claude Opus 4.1 for.
Reviewing and drafting 100-page legal contracts with nuanced clause-by-clause analysis
Building autonomous research agents that synthesize findings across dozens of academic papers in a single context
Generating polished, publication-ready technical documentation or investor-facing reports from raw notes
How Claude Opus 4.1 compares
The nearest models people weigh against it, and what actually separates them.
vs Claude 3.5 Sonnet — Against Claude 3.5 Sonnet (Anthropic), Claude Opus 4.1 costs about 60% more per token and answers slower. Claude 3.5 Sonnet is the one to check first if the price difference matters more than the ceiling.
vs Claude Fable 5 — Against Claude Fable 5 (Anthropic), Claude Opus 4.1 costs about 33% more per token and gives up 5x on context. Claude Fable 5 is the one to check first if the price difference matters more than the ceiling.
vs Claude Fable 5.1 — Against Claude Fable 5.1 (Anthropic), Claude Opus 4.1 costs about 33% more per token and gives up 5x on context. Claude Fable 5.1 is the one to check first if the price difference matters more than the ceiling.
Price History
Claude Opus 4.1 pricing over time
→0% since Jun 1
90 data points · tracked daily since Jun 1, 2026
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Start using Claude Opus 4.1
High-stakes professional work where output quality justifies premium pricing — legal analysis, advanced research synthesis, and complex agentic workflows.. Start free — no card required.
Claude 3.5 Sonnet is Anthropic's mid-cycle flagship model, balancing strong reasoning, coding, and instruction-following with a 200K context window. It sits between Haiku and Opus in Anthropic's lineup, offering near-flagship quality at a lower cost than top-tier models.
Verdict
One of the best models for coding and complex instruction-following, but its premium pricing demands premium use cases.
Quality score
81%
Pricing
$6.00/1M in
$30.00/1M out
Speed
Balanced
3/5 speed
Context
200k tokens
Pricing at $6 input / $30 output per million tokens is significantly higher than GPT-4o ($2.50/$10). Best accessed via Anthropic API or Amazon Bedrock. Claude 3.5 Sonnet (October 2024 version) supersedes the June 2024 release with improved performance.
Anthropic's new Mythos-class flagship and the most capable coding model anyone can use — 80.3% SWE-Bench Pro, an 11-point jump over Opus 4.8. 1M context, 128K output, native parallel subagents. Released June 9, 2026.
Verdict
New global #1 — 80.3% SWE-Bench Pro, the most capable model generally available.
Quality score
98%
Pricing
$10.00/1M in
$50.00/1M out
Speed
Deliberate
2/5 speed
Context
1M tokens
Launched June 9, 2026 as the public, Mythos-class release. Available on the Claude API, Microsoft Foundry, and Google Vertex AI. Free for all users until June 22, 2026. Same underlying model as Claude Mythos 5, with safeguards that block specific high-risk cyber responses.
Coding leaderSWE-Bench Pro #1Mythos-classParallel subagentsAgenticLong contextPremiumNew
Best for
The hardest coding tasks, autonomous multi-step agents, and frontier-grade reasoning
Anthropic's September 1, 2026 frontier release and the new capability ceiling for coding, agents, and scientific work. Base pricing is unchanged at $10/$50, but cache reads dropped 75% to $0.25/1M — roughly 25% cheaper on typical workloads and up to 45% cheaper on agentic ones. 1M context, 128K output, adaptive thinking always on.
Verdict
New frontier leader — better than Fable 5 on every published benchmark, and cheaper to run.
Quality score
98%
Pricing
$10.00/1M in
$50.00/1M out
Speed
Deliberate
2/5 speed
Context
1M tokens
Released September 1, 2026 alongside Claude Mythos 5.1, the first update to the Mythos-class line since Fable 5 on June 9. API ID claude-fable-5-1; generally available on the Claude API, Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Foundry. Published launch numbers (Fable 5.1 / Fable 5 / Opus 5 / GPT-5.6 Sol): Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 52.6 / 24.7 / 29.0 / 22.4; Terminal-Bench 4.0 55.8 / 42.0 / 52.3 / 37.3; CursorBench 3.2.0 73.4 / 70.5 / 70.0 / 67.2; AutomationBench 31.4 / 17.1 / 26.9 / 19.6; OSWorld 2.0 strict 41.7 / 36.1 / 39.6; Humanity's Last Exam (no tools) 60.9 / 57.8 / 56.6; GDPval-AA v2 1853 / 1723 / 1824 / 1711. GDPval-AA v2 is rescaled from the v1 numbers quoted on the Fable 5 page and is not directly comparable to them.
Anthropic: Claude Opus 4.1 (Anthropic) is now indexed. It supersedes Claude 4 Haiku. Anthropic's most capable model for demanding professional work, but its steep output cost demands justification.
Claude Opus 4.1 costs $15 per million input tokens and $75 per million output tokens on the API. A month of 10M input and 2M output tokens runs about $300.00 at list price, before any batch or caching discounts.
What is Claude Opus 4.1 best for?
Claude Opus 4.1 is best for high-stakes professional work where output quality justifies premium pricing — legal analysis, advanced research synthesis, and complex agentic workflows.. It is a strong fit when that workflow matters more than the tradeoffs around premium pricing and deliberate speed.
When should I avoid Claude Opus 4.1?
You're building high-volume APIs, need real-time responses, or your tasks are well-handled by mid-tier models like Claude Sonnet 4 or GPT-4.1 Mini.
What is a cheaper alternative to Claude Opus 4.1?
Claude Fable 5 (Anthropic) at $10.00/1M/1M input against Claude Opus 4.1's $15.00/1M/1M — roughly 33% less per token all in. New global #1 — 80.3% SWE-Bench Pro, the most capable model generally available. Compare it first if Claude Opus 4.1's pricing is the thing stopping you.
What is a faster alternative to Claude Opus 4.1?
Claude 3.5 Sonnet — balanced against Claude Opus 4.1's deliberate, with 200k tokens of context. Worth the swap when response time is what your users notice rather than the last few points of reasoning depth.
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