Claude Opus 5 Pricing: $5 and $25 per Million Tokens

Claude Opus 5 costs $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens, the same rate as Opus 4.8 and exactly half of Claude Fable 5's $10/$50 pricing. Anthropic released the model on July 24, 2026, and priced it to undercut its own flagship rather than sit above it.

That is the headline number. The more useful question is what it means for your bill, because Anthropic is not pitching Opus 5 on the sticker price. The company is pitching it on cost per completed task, and the two numbers tell different stories.

Claude Opus 5 pricing at a glance

Anthropic describes Opus 5 as its fourth model launch in two months, following Fable 5 and Mythos 5 earlier in that window. On price specifically, Opus 5 lands at the same $5/$25 rate as Opus 4.8, not above it. If you were already budgeting for Opus 4.8, nothing changes on the invoice. If you were paying Fable 5 rates for work that Opus 5 now handles as well or better, your cost per million tokens is cut in half.

Why Anthropic is talking about cost per task, not cost per token

Token price is easy to compare and easy to publish, so it is what gets quoted first. It is also an incomplete measure of what a model actually costs you to run.

Anthropic's own benchmark disclosures for Opus 5 make the cost-per-task framing explicit. On OSWorld 2.0, the computer-use benchmark, Anthropic says Opus 5 beats Fable 5 at roughly one third of the cost. That is not a token-price claim. It is a claim about how many steps, retries, and tokens a model needs to actually finish a computer-use task end to end.

Here is why that distinction matters for a real workload. A model priced at half the tokens can still cost you more per completed job if it takes twice as many attempts, generates longer chains of reasoning, or needs a second pass to fix its own mistakes. Conversely, a model with a higher per-token price can be cheaper in practice if it finishes the task in fewer steps. Anthropic is arguing Opus 5 wins on both axes for computer-use workloads: cheaper tokens and fewer of them needed per task.

For a straight text-generation or coding workload where token count scales predictably with output length, the $5/$25 rate is a direct, comparable number. For agentic workloads, especially ones that involve browsing, tool calls, or multi-step computer control, the cost-per-task framing is the one to actually budget against.

How Opus 5 pricing compares to Claude Fable 5

If you are deciding between Opus 5 and Fable 5 for a new project, the pricing gap is the first filter, not the last one.

• Opus 5 at $5/$25 per million tokens is the model to default to for the large majority of workloads: coding, writing, analysis, agent orchestration, and computer-use tasks where Anthropic's own testing shows it ahead of Fable 5.
• Fable 5 at $10/$50 per million tokens remains double the price. There is no benchmark disclosed where Fable 5 shows a decisive win over Opus 5 on general intelligence; per the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, Opus 5 (max reasoning mode) scores 61 against Fable 5's 60, putting Opus 5 first among all 170 models the Index tracks.

That combination, equal or better general performance at half the price, is why most teams currently on Fable 5 for non-specialized work have a straightforward case to test Opus 5 against their own evals before renewing budget at the higher rate. For a deeper look at where Fable 5 still makes sense, see our Claude Fable 5 pricing breakdown and the current Claude Fable 5 alternatives if you are shopping for something other than Opus 5 entirely.

Who should actually switch to Opus 5

Not every team benefits from switching models the day a new one ships. Here is a practical way to think about it.

Switch now if:

• You are running Fable 5 for coding, research, writing, or general agent tasks where Anthropic has not claimed a Fable 5 advantage.
• You run computer-use or browser-automation agents, where the OSWorld 2.0 cost claim (roughly a third of the cost at a win) is the strongest financial argument in this release.
• You use Zapier or similar automation tooling; Anthropic cites Opus 5 at roughly 1.5x the next-best score on Zapier's AutomationBench, a workload category priced identically to any other Opus 5 usage.

Stay on your current model if:

• Your workload is cybersecurity-specific. Anthropic's own disclosure places Opus 5 behind Mythos 5 on cybersecurity benchmarks, the one category in this release where Anthropic did not claim the top spot.
• You are already on Opus 4.8 and your evals show no material gap versus Opus 5 on your specific task. The token price is identical, so there is no cost reason to move until you have benchmarked the quality difference for your use case.
• You have hard-coded model version pins in a regulated pipeline where a mid-quarter model swap requires a change-control cycle regardless of price.

What this means for your monthly bill

A rough way to estimate the shift: take your current Fable 5 monthly spend, divide by two, and that is your Opus 5 spend for the same token volume, assuming equivalent output length. In practice, output length is not always equivalent, since Opus 5's disclosed Frontier-Bench performance (which Anthropic says beats all other models tested, including more than 2x Opus 4.8) suggests it may need fewer corrective turns on complex tasks, which would push real savings above the raw 50% token-price cut.

The only way to know your actual number is to run your own workload through both models and compare total tokens consumed to completion, not just the per-token rate. For a side-by-side on where Opus 5 and Fable 5 actually diverge on capability, not just price, see our full Opus 5 vs Fable 5 comparison. For the benchmark detail behind these pricing decisions, read our Claude Opus 5 benchmarks breakdown. You can also browse current pricing and specs for every Anthropic model on our models page.

FAQ

How much does Claude Opus 5 cost?

Claude Opus 5 costs $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens. That is the same price as Claude Opus 4.8 and half of Claude Fable 5's $10/$50 rate, according to Anthropic's July 24, 2026 launch pricing.

Is Claude Opus 5 cheaper than Claude Fable 5?

Yes, on a per-token basis Opus 5 is exactly half the price of Fable 5. On a per-task basis for computer-use workloads, Anthropic says Opus 5 beats Fable 5 at roughly one third of the cost on the OSWorld 2.0 benchmark, an even larger practical gap than the token price alone suggests.

Does Claude Opus 5 cost more than Claude Opus 4.8?

No. Opus 5 and Opus 4.8 are priced identically at $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens. Anthropic did not raise the price at the top non-Fable tier for this release.

What is the cheapest way to use Claude Opus 5?

There is a single published rate: $5/$25 per million tokens through the standard API. Actual cost per task can still vary significantly based on how many turns or retries a workload needs, which is why Anthropic frames some of its Opus 5 claims in cost-per-task terms rather than token price alone.

Should I switch from Fable 5 to Opus 5 to save money?

For most general workloads, yes, since Opus 5 matches or beats Fable 5 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (61 vs 60) at half the token price. The exception is cybersecurity-specific work, where Anthropic's own disclosure places Opus 5 behind Mythos 5, so that is not a workload to migrate on price alone without testing quality first.

Why did Anthropic price Opus 5 the same as Opus 4.8 instead of higher?

Anthropic has not published its reasoning for the price point. What is confirmed is that Opus 5 matches Opus 4.8's $5/$25 rate rather than introducing a new, higher tier, while Fable 5 remains priced at $10/$50.

How does Opus 5's price compare across different task types?

The $5/$25 rate is flat across task types, but effective cost per task is not. Anthropic's disclosed benchmarks suggest the price advantage compounds on computer-use and automation workloads (OSWorld 2.0, Zapier's AutomationBench), where fewer retries mean fewer total tokens billed, on top of the lower per-token rate.

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Sources: Anthropic, Introducing Claude Opus 5, CNBC, Anthropic's Claude Opus 5 launch, TechCrunch, Anthropic launches Opus 5, Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index