Anthropic Launches Opus 5: Half the Price of Fable, Beats It on Benchmarks

Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5 was published on July 24, 2026. It is a model in the fifth generation family, which is better than the top model Fable 5 in some ways, while being half the price ($5 / Million tokens input, $25 / Million tokens output compared to $10/$50 for Fable).

The most impressive feature of Opus 5 is that it iteratively improves its responses. It checks them for accuracy and adjusts them accordingly. In the demo, it was asked to create a full computer vision system based on an incomplete and vague prompt, without any further instructions.

1Fewer Restrictions, No Data Retention

The safety filters in Opus 5 are used 85% less frequently than in Fable 5. The model is much less restrictive. It also doesn’t store conversations for 30 days like Fable and Mythos. There is a new beta feature called Automatic Fallbacks. If a safety filter is hit, it automatically forwards the request to a weaker model.

However, Opus 5 still cannot examine binaries for security issues. You can work with source code, but not with disassembled code. This is a conscious choice by the developers, unlike Mythos.

2What This Means for the AI Services Market

Claude Opus 5 was released two months ago (Opus 4.8). Now, all models in the fifth generation of Claude are published except for Haiku 5. The lower price and similar/better performance make it more attractive for API development. Projects that could not afford Fable before now have access to the same level of quality at half the cost.