$5 / $25
per million tokens in / out: unchanged from Opus 4.8, exactly half of Fable 5's $10/$50
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+60%
what our identical dashboard prompt actually cost on Opus 5 vs 4.8: $0.1158 vs $0.0724. Same rates, more tokens
$2.50/$12.50
effective batched rate: the Batch API halves both sides for async jobs
Claude Opus 5 costs $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output as of July 2026, unchanged from Opus 4.8 and half of Fable 5's rate. In our measured runs the identical prompt billed about 60% more on Opus 5 than on 4.8, because it writes more tokens.
How much does Claude Opus 5 cost?
$5 per million input tokens, $25 per million output, the same price Opus has carried since the 67% cut at Opus 4.5 in November 2025 (Anthropic pricing). Launch coverage led with the comparison that matters: half the token price of Fable 5. Prompt-cache reads bill at 10% of input; the Batch API takes 50% off both sides.
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The verbosity tax: what the rate card hides
Here is the finding from our metered runs that no rate card shows. We sent the identical one-shot prompt ("build a sortable invoice dashboard, single file") to Opus 5 and Opus 4.8. Same price sheet. Opus 5 wrote 4,610 output tokens where 4.8 wrote 2,877, and billed $0.1158 against $0.0724. Both dashboards worked. We then confirmed the finding at scale: across a 12-run, six-task battery, Opus 5 billed 77% more than 4.8 at identical rates and scored 1.48 on the Verbosity Index against 4.8's 0.92. When you forecast an upgrade from 4.8, budget for token counts, not rates.
The same two tasks on every model we could meter
We sent an identical dashboard-generation prompt and an identical invoice-extraction prompt to every model we can call directly, on July 28, 2026, and recorded the actual bills. No estimates in the measured rows.
| Model | Rate $/M in / out | Dashboard task, measured | Extraction task, measured |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Fable 5 | $10 / $50 | $0.1462 | $0.0148* |
| Claude Opus 5 | $5 / $25 | $0.1158 | $0.0114 |
| Claude Opus 4.8 | $5 / $25 | $0.0724 | $0.0093 |
| Claude Sonnet 5 | $2 / $10 | $0.0410 | $0.0037 |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | $1 / $5 | $0.0162 | $0.0016 |
Measured 2026-07-28, one shot each, default settings, list prices. *Fable extraction is same-tokens list math from our earlier run; every other cell is a metered bill. Prompts published verbatim in the Fable 5 breakdown. All outputs completed the task; quality-per-dollar comparisons need the published benchmark scores, not this table alone.
Opus 5 vs Fable 5: is half price the bargain it sounds like?
For coding and agentic work, mostly yes: that is why Anthropic positions Opus as the default and Fable as the specialist. For the hardest reasoning, Fable holds an edge the premium pays for. The pattern that wastes the least money is neither loyalty: default to the cheaper tier, escalate on failure. Our Fable 5 alternatives breakdown covers the decision in detail.
Opus 5 pricing questions, answered
Did Opus 5 change Anthropic's pricing?
No. It launched at the same $5/$25 that Opus 4.8 carried, holding the price set by the 67% cut at Opus 4.5 in November 2025. The premium tier above it, Fable 5 at $10/$50, is where the ladder changed in 2026.
Why do my Opus 5 bills exceed my Opus 4.8 bills at the same rates?
Verbosity. In our measured runs Opus 5 wrote about 60% more output tokens on the identical prompt. Tighter max-token limits and instructions to be concise claw much of that back.
Is Opus 5 cheaper than GPT-5.6 Sol?
On output, yes: $25 versus $30 per million, with input tied at $5. On real bills, token counts differ by model and prompt, which is why we publish measured task costs rather than rate-card math alone.
What is the cheapest way to run Opus 5?
Batch what can wait (50% off both sides, so $2.50/$12.50 effective) and cache what repeats (reads at 10% of input). Both discounts stack with concise-output instructions, which matter more on Opus 5 than they did on 4.8.
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List rates and dated competitor measurements: prices and measured bills. Pareto 26.9 measured task costs are not published. Verbosity: Edition 2.
Opus-class results at 6–38¢ on the dollar. Verify it.
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