Claude Opus 5 launches near Fable 5 power at half cost
Anthropic has launched Claude Opus 5, a new everyday AI model that comes close to Claude Fable 5's frontier intelligence at roughly half the price, costing $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens for businesses seeking high performance without premium spend. Opus is available today across Claude platforms and the API, and it is the new default on Claude Max.
Key Takeaways
- Claude Opus 5 approaches Fable 5-level intelligence at about half the cost, at $5/$25 per million input/output tokens.
- Anthropic says Opus leads on coding and knowledge-work benchmarks such as Frontier-Bench and GDPval-AA.
- The model trails Mythos 5 on offensive cybersecurity and biology research risk capabilities.
- Opus 5 is framed as the everyday Claude 5 workhorse as Anthropic prepares for an IPO later this year.
What is Claude Opus 5 and why does it matter?
On July 24, 2026, Anthropic introduced Claude Opus 5 as a thoughtful, proactive model meant for daily use. The company says it comes close to the frontier intelligence of Claude Fable 5 while costing roughly half as much, a pitch aimed at enterprises watching AI spend.
According to Anthropic, Opus 5 is the new default model on Claude Max and the strongest option on Claude Pro. Developers can call it as claude-opus-5 on the Claude API. For more coverage in this space, see our Future Tech & AI Wonders hub.
How does Opus stack up on benchmarks and price?
Anthropic reports that Opus 5 is state of the art on coding and knowledge-work evaluations such as Frontier-Bench and GDPval-AA. On Frontier-Bench v0.1, it more than doubles Opus 4.8's performance at a lower cost per task. On CursorBench 3.2 at max effort, it lands within 0.5% of Fable 5's peak score at half the cost per task.
CNBC notes that Opus 5 outperforms Fable 5 on those coding and knowledge-work evaluations while remaining half the price of Fable 5. Pricing matches Opus 4.8: $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens. Fast mode runs about 2.5 times default speed at twice the base price.
Yahoo Finance reports Anthropic is framing Opus 5 as the go-to model for most tasks, including knowledge work and automation, as the company preps for an IPO later this year after confidential filings in June.
Is Opus 5 safer than Mythos 5 and Fable 5?
Anthropic says Opus 5 does not advance the frontier in risky dual-use capabilities. It remains behind Mythos 5 in biology research and offensive cybersecurity, based on evaluations with private-sector and government partners. Details are outlined in Anthropic's official Opus 5 announcement.
In pre-deployment testing, Anthropic calls Opus 5 its most aligned model to date, with lower rates of deceptive behavior than Opus 4.8, Sonnet 5, or Fable 5. Unlike Fable 5, Opus 5 does not have the same 30-day data-retention requirement for general access, Yahoo Finance reports.
When can teams start using Claude Opus 5?
Anthropic says Claude Opus 5 is available today on all platforms. Alongside the launch, the company is shipping beta updates for mid-conversation tool changes and automatic safety-classifier fallbacks on the API. Dianne Penn, Anthropic's head of product management for research, told CNBC that enterprises want value: cheaper models only help if quality stays high.