Anthropic has launched Claude Opus 5, an upgrade to Opus 4.8, designed for daily use and offering performance comparable to the flagship Fable 5 model at half the price. Opus 5 demonstrates improved scores over Opus 4.8 in areas such as agentic coding, problem-solving, knowledge work, and multidisciplinary reasoning, with enhancements noted for scientific research and visual output generation.

Despite its advancements, Opus 5 maintains the same pricing structure as Opus 4.8: $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens, with an optional Fast mode available at double the cost. The model shows improved ability in task verification and iteration. While it nears Mythos 5 in identifying cybersecurity vulnerabilities, it remains significantly behind in exploitation capabilities due to its training limitations.

Opus 5 is now the default model for Claude Max and the top-tier option for Claude Pro users across all platforms. This release positions Opus 5 as a strong contender for users seeking high-level AI performance without the premium cost associated with Fable 5.