Claude Opus 5 vs Fable 5
On the rate card, Opus 5 is half the price: $5 in / $25 out per million tokens against Fable 5's $10 / $50. On a metered task the gap narrows, because Opus 5 spends more tokens doing the same job.
Prices are provider list rates, July 2026. Task bills are our own metered runs, not token math.
Claude Opus 5
Launched Jul 24, 2026, same card as Opus 4.8
$5 / $25 in / out, per Mtok
- This task, metered
- $0.1158Same 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
- 4,610Tokens billed on the identical task in the July 2026 run. Opus 4.8 spent 2,877 on the same job.
- 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 see why the card alone misleads.
Preliminary Pareto 26.10 scores and cost per task on four benchmarks are on the model card. These results may change before final publication, and no composite score is published.
Upper bar is the input rate, lower bar the output rate, dollars per million tokens.
Current Pareto rates are $0.80 input, $0.03 cached input, and $3.20 output per million tokens. The figures here are historical July 2026 measurements, not current-release task costs.
Output tokens bill at five times input on both cards. Verbose models feel that multiplier; the metered view shows the result.
At 25 tasks a day, picking Opus 5 over Fable 5 saves $22.80 a month on this task. Sending it to the blend saves $94.95.
Straight multiplication: tasks a day, times 30, times the metered per-task bill. Your tasks will differ. Meter them.
The token catch nobody prices
Half the rate is not half the bill. Opus 5 wrote about 60% more tokens than Opus 4.8 on the same job, and Fable 5 bills every one of its tokens at double Opus rates. If you are choosing between these two on price, the only honest comparison is a metered task, and the metered gap here is 21%, not 50%.
Claude Opus 5
4,610 tokensClaude Opus 4.8
2,877 tokensThe whole field
| Model | Notes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fable 5 | $10 | $50 | $0.1462 | Left Claude subscription plans Jul 7; API usage credits |
| 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 |
| GPT-6.1 Sol | $2 | $10 | not run | List rates only; cached input $0.10 |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | $2 | $10 | not run | Released Sep 28, 2026; cache hits $0.10 |
| Sonnet 5 | $2 | $10 | $0.0410 | $2 / $10 now standard; Sep 1 increase cancelled |
| GPT-6 Luna | $0.10 | $0.50 | not run | |
| Haiku 4.5 | off-list | off-list | $0.0162 | Metered in the same run; its card is not tracked on this page |
Rates move. Dated changes are on the timeline below; the next scheduled list-price increases (Gemini 4 Argon on Dec 1, 2026 and Gemini Flash on Jan 1, 2027) are tracked on the AI price tracker.
How the prices moved
Jul 24: Opus 5 launches
Opus 5 launched at $5 / $25, the same card as Opus 4.8. Same rates, different token appetite: 4,610 tokens against 2,877 on our fixed task.
Sonnet 5 update: the Sep 1 increase was cancelled; $2/$10 is now standard.
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 current model card publishes preliminary Pareto 26.10 scores and cost per task on four benchmarks. No composite score is published for this release.
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
Preliminary Pareto 26.10 scores and cost per task on four benchmarks are on the model card. These results may change before final publication, and no composite score is published.
What a gateway hop 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 hop’s cost is measurable and small.
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: Pareto selects frontier and open models for each request and blends their outputs into one answer, so you skip this choice entirely.
Apply for onboarding