On July 24, 2026, Anthropic released Claude Opus 5 — already the company’s fourth new model in less than two months. The main feature of the release is simple: performance close to the top-tier Claude Fable 5, but at half the price. We break down what changed and who this model is best suited for.
What Is Claude Opus 5
Opus 5 is the new mid-to-high-tier version in the Claude lineup, replacing Claude Opus 4.8. According to Anthropic, the model comes close to the level of Claude Fable 5’s “frontier” intelligence across many tasks, while remaining more affordable.
The model immediately became the default model in Claude Max and the most powerful available option in Claude Pro. Developers can call it through the API under the name claude-opus-5.
Price: the Same as Its Predecessor, but Half the Price of Fable 5
Claude Opus 5 costs $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens — exactly the same as the previous Opus 4.8 model. Compared with Claude Fable 5, which costs $10/$50 per million tokens, this is exactly half the price while offering similar performance on many tasks.
What’s New: Adjusting the Model’s “Effort” Level
One of the main practical new features is the ability to switch the model’s “effort” level: low, medium or high. This allows users to balance response speed/cost and depth of analysis themselves, depending on the complexity of the specific task.
Anthropic also notes that the model has become easier to use — it requires fewer clarifying prompts, independently checks its own work and recovers from errors without user intervention.
Technical Specifications
- Context window — 1 million tokens (default and maximum)
- Maximum output tokens — 128,000
- “Thinking” mode is enabled by default
- Leading results on the Frontier-Bench and GDPval-AA benchmarks
- On some cybersecurity metrics, it still trails Claude Mythos 5
In Brief: The Key Points
- July 24, 2026 — Claude Opus 5 release, Anthropic’s fourth new model in two months
- Price — $5/$25 per million tokens, like Opus 4.8, twice as cheap as Fable 5 ($10/$50)
- Became the default model in Claude Max and the top option in Claude Pro
- New feature — adjusting the model’s “effort” level (low/medium/high)
- Context window — 1 million tokens, up to 128,000 tokens per response
FAQ
When was Claude Opus 5 released? July 24, 2026, immediately available on all Anthropic platforms and through the API.
How much does Claude Opus 5 cost? $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens — the same price as the previous Opus 4.8 model.
How is Claude Opus 5 different from Claude Fable 5? Opus 5 comes close to Fable 5’s performance on many tasks, but costs half as much. Fable 5 remains the top model in Anthropic’s lineup.
What is “effort” level adjustment in Opus 5? A new feature that lets you choose how deeply the model processes a request — low, medium or high level, balancing response speed/cost and quality.
What context window does Claude Opus 5 have? 1 million tokens by default and as the maximum, with up to 128,000 output tokens.
The article was prepared by the TechVisor team — practical IT media for people.
