Claude Opus 4.8 vs Fable 5
Fable 5 costs 2x Opus 4.8 on the rate card ($10/$50 vs $5/$25 per million) and also spends its tokens less frugally: our metered task cost $0.1462 on Fable 5 and $0.0724 on Opus 4.8.
List rates July 2026; bills metered the same day, same prompt, same harness.
Claude Opus 4.8
The previous flagship, the quiet bargain of the ladder
$5 / $25 in / out, per Mtok
- This task, metered
- $0.0724Same fixed prompt on every model, run the same day, priced from the provider's own bill, not token estimates. Raw outputs are in the Fable 5 pricing breakdown.
- Tokens on this task
- 2,877Tokens billed on the identical task in the July 2026 run. Opus 5 spent 4,610 on the same job, on the same rates.
- Output over input
- 5x
Fable 5
The frontier model, API-only since Jul 7
$10 / $50 in / out, per Mtok
- This task, metered
- $0.1462Same fixed prompt on every model, run the same day, priced from the provider's own bill, not token estimates. Raw outputs are in the Fable 5 pricing breakdown.
- Access
- API usage creditsFable 5 left the Claude subscription plans on Jul 7, 2026. Subscriptions had carried weekly usage limits since summer 2025, metered in 5-hour session windows.
- Output over input
- 5x
The tale of the tape, receipts included. Any number with an i button carries its method note; hover it, tap it, or tab to it.
The short version
One task, two bills
The fixed dashboard build we meter every model against. Bars scale to the bills; flip to the rate card to check it against the meter.
The card said 2x and the meter agreed: $0.1462 against $0.0724 lands right at double. Frugal token spend kept the card honest here; on the Opus 5 page it does not. The blend ran the same task for $0.0196.
Upper bar is the input rate, lower bar the output rate, dollars per million tokens.
No fixed card. The blend picks a provider per request and bills the tokens it used.
Output tokens bill at five times input on both cards, so a model's writing habits set the real bill. The metered view shows the result.
At 25 tasks a day, Opus 4.8 runs $55.35 a month under Fable 5 on this task. The blend runs $94.95 under.
Straight multiplication: tasks a day, times 30, times the metered per-task bill. Your tasks will differ. Meter them.
When the 2x is worth it
If your hardest tasks fail on 4.8 and succeed on Fable 5, the 2x buys you outcomes and is cheap. If both succeed, you are paying double for the same result. The way to know is not a benchmark chart, it is running your own workload on both and reading the two bills.
A real session, priced
Rate cards price tokens; agent sessions read far more than they write, and caching reprices the whole thing. One real Claude Code working session, straight off the console bill:
Session ledger: Claude Code
Call it $0.59. Five calls, one working session, July 2026.
Why it belongs on this page: 4.8's frugality is a workload property, not a chart property. Caching, read-heavy context, and token appetite move real bills more than list prices do. The model card publishes seven same-harness benchmarks with both bills; across them, the blend's per-task cost ran 6 to 38 cents on the Opus 5 dollar.
The whole field, July 2026
| Model | Notes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fable 5 | $10 | $50 | $0.1462 | Left Claude subscription plans Jul 7; API usage credits |
| GPT-5.6 Sol | $5 | $30 | not run | Output prices at 6x input on this card |
| Claude Opus 5 | $5 | $25 | $0.1158 | Launched Jul 24; same card as Opus 4.8 |
| Claude Opus 4.8 | $5 | $25 | $0.0724 | The previous flagship |
| Kimi K3 | $3 | $15 | queued | API live Jul 16; cache-hit input $0.30; flat across context |
| Terra | $2.50 | $15 | not run | |
| Sonnet 5 | $2 | $10 | $0.0410 | Intro card to Aug 31; then $3 / $15 |
| Luna | $1 | $6 | not run | |
| Haiku 4.5 | off-list | off-list | $0.0162 | Metered in the same run; its card is not tracked on this page |
| Pareto, the blend | credits | credits | $0.0196 | Blended per request; receipts on the model card |
Rates move. Dated changes are on the timeline below, and the biggest scheduled one has a countdown.
How the prices moved
Nov 2025: Opus cut 67%
Claude Opus went from $15 / $75 to $5 / $25 per million, a 67% cut. That is the card Opus 4.8 still runs on today, and the reason it reads like a bargain beside the frontier.
Next scheduled move: Sonnet 5 intro pricing ends Sep 1, 2026.
Method and caveats
How the metered bills are made
One harness, every model, the same day: identical prompts, standard retries, no per-model tuning. Cost is read off the provider's bill per completed task, never estimated from token math. The model card publishes seven same-harness benchmarks with both bills, losses included.
Why the rate card alone misleads
Cards price tokens; bills price behavior. On the identical task, Opus 5 billed 4,610 tokens where Opus 4.8 billed 2,877, about 60% more, on the same rates. Output tokens run 5 to 6x input across the July cards, so verbosity compounds fast.
The second task we meter
A fixed game build, metered the same way: Fable 5 billed $0.2269, the blend billed $0.0220. Task shape moves bills more than rate cards do, which is why we publish per-task receipts instead of one blended average.
What routing adds in latency
Twenty streamed runs, gateway against direct: median time to first token was 68ms slower through the gateway, and p95 through the gateway beat direct. The routing tax is measurable, small, and published.
New head-to-heads land by email first
Same harness, both models, bills published beside scores. One email per matchup, the day it lands. Nothing else.
One request in, one answer out: the blend picks per request, so you skip this choice entirely.
Get your credits matched