Released July 24, 2026 at Opus 4.8's exact pricing. 1M context at standard rates, 128K max output. Anthropic's alignment audit calls it their most aligned model to date. Default model on Claude Max plans.
Leads SWE-bench Verified at ~96% — the top public coding score as of August 2026
89.1% on Terminal-Bench 2.1 and state-of-the-art on Frontier-Bench v0.1, more than doubling Opus 4.8's result
Within 0.5% of Claude Fable 5 on CursorBench 3.2 at half the cost per task
Weaknesses
Still short of Claude Fable 5's absolute frontier ceiling on the hardest long-running agent tasks
Fast mode (research preview) doubles pricing to $10/$50, erasing the cost advantage over Fable 5
Real-world use cases
What people actually use Claude Opus 5 for.
Long-running repository-level engineering with the top SWE-bench Verified score (~96%)
Autonomous computer-use agents — beats Fable 5's best OSWorld 2.0 result at one-third the cost
Enterprise automation where Opus 4.8 quality was the bar and price capped Fable 5 adoption
How Claude Opus 5 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 5 runs about 17% cheaper per token, takes 5x the context and answers slower. Which one wins depends on whether context depth or latency is your constraint.
vs Claude Fable 5 — Against Claude Fable 5 (Anthropic), Claude Opus 5 runs about 50% cheaper per token. Take Claude Opus 5 unless you specifically need what Claude Fable 5 does better.
vs Claude Fable 5.1 — Against Claude Fable 5.1 (Anthropic), Claude Opus 5 runs about 50% cheaper per token. Take Claude Opus 5 unless you specifically need what Claude Fable 5.1 does better.
Price History
Claude Opus 5 pricing over time
→0% since Sep 3
6 data points · tracked daily since Sep 3, 2026
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Start using Claude Opus 5
Complex agentic coding and enterprise agent 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.
Claude Opus 5 costs $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens on the API, with cached input at $0.5 per million. A month of 10M input and 2M output tokens runs about $100.00 at list price, before any batch or caching discounts.
What is the context window of Claude Opus 5?
Claude Opus 5 has a 1M tokens context window, with up to 128k tokens of output per response. That is the total of prompt plus response the model can hold in one request.
What is the knowledge cutoff of Claude Opus 5?
Claude Opus 5's training data runs through May 2026, and the model was released on July 24, 2026. For anything after that date it needs web search or documents in the prompt.
What is Claude Opus 5 best for?
Claude Opus 5 is best for complex agentic coding and enterprise agent 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 5?
You need fast interactive latency (Sonnet 5 is quicker and one-fifth the price) or absolute frontier ceiling (Fable 5).
What is a cheaper alternative to Claude Opus 5?
GPT-5.1-Codex-Max (OpenAI) at $1.25/1M/1M input against Claude Opus 5's $5.00/1M/1M — roughly 63% less per token all in. The strongest choice for serious software engineering work, provided you can absorb the output-side pricing. Compare it first if Claude Opus 5's pricing is the thing stopping you.
What is a faster alternative to Claude Opus 5?
Claude 3.5 Sonnet — balanced against Claude Opus 5'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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