Model comparison
Claude Fable 5 vs Claude Opus 5
Two Anthropic tiers compared on the figures that decide which one a workload actually needs.
Catalog record checked August 7, 2026; individual provider fields may change.
Anthropic
Claude Fable 5
Frontier
Anthropic
Claude Opus 5
Frontier
| Specification | Claude Fable 5 | Claude Opus 5 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Tier | Frontier | Frontier |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Max output | 128K | 128K |
| Input / 1M tokens | $10 | Winner: $5 |
| Output / 1M tokens | $50 | Winner: $25 |
| Weights | Closed | Closed |
| Parameters | Not disclosed | Not disclosed |
| Reasoning levels | low, medium, high, xhigh, max | low, medium, high, xhigh, max |
| Modalities | text, image | text, image |
| Released | June 9, 2026 | July 24, 2026 |
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index [max] (2026-08-08) | 62 | Winner: 63 |
Prices are USD per million tokens at standard rates, excluding batch and caching discounts. Bold indicates the better figure where one is objectively better. Values we could not confirm from the provider are shown as “Not verified” rather than estimated.
Claude Fable 5
Anthropic's most expensive tier, at twice the price of Opus 5; access was suspended on 2026-06-12 and restored on 2026-07-01.
Best for
- Work where capability outweighs cost entirely
Watch out
Opus 5 scored higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index at half the price — justify the premium.
Claude Opus 5
Anthropic's frontier tier, and ahead of Fable 5 on both recorded benchmarks at half the price.
Best for
- Agentic coding
- Long-context analysis
- Multi-step engineering work
Watch out
Output tokens cost five times input — long generations dominate the bill.
Benchmark
DeepSWE 1.1 in context
Both models shown against the wider field, with cost per completed task alongside the score.
Local leader
Claude Opus 5 [max]
74%
Rows shown
24
Highest published reasoning effort per model (not best Pass@1)
Snapshot date
2026-08-13
Mirrored from deepswe.datacurve.ai
Better is toward the top-right (higher pass rate, lower cost). X-axis is reversed to match DeepSWE’s public chart. v1.1 uses average cost / tokens / steps; v1 uses published medians.
| # | Model | Pass@1 | Cost / task | Tokens / task | Steps / task |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Claude Opus 5 [max] | 74% | $11.84 | 118k | 99 |
| 2 | GPT-5.6 Sol [max] | 73% | $8.39 | 60k | 61 |
| 3 | Claude Fable 5 [max] | 70% | $21.63 | 119k | 88 |
| 4 | GPT-5.6 Terra [max] | 70% | $4.95 | 72k | 76 |
| 5 | Kimi K3 [max] | 69% | $4.65 | 82k | 98 |
| 6 | GPT-5.6 Luna [max] | 67% | $3.03 | 73k | 102 |
| 7 | GPT-5.5 [xhigh] | 67% | $7.23 | 46k | 82 |
| 8 | Grok 4.6 [xhigh] | 67% | $5.50 | 71k | 87 |
| 9 | Gemini 3.7 Flash [high] | 65% | $2.18 | 107k | 125 |
| 10 | DeepSeek V4-Pro [max] | 63% | $0.24 | 106k | 155 |
| 11 | Claude Opus 4.8 [max] | 59% | $13.22 | 135k | 120 |
| 12 | Qwen3.8-Max [xhigh] | 58% | $3.73 | 95k | 111 |
| 13 | Muse Spark 1.2 [xhigh] | 55% | $3.70 | 99k | 101 |
| 14 | Claude Sonnet 5 [max] | 54% | $26.40 | 214k | 268 |
| 15 | Grok 4.5 [high] | 54% | $2.42 | 36k | 61 |
| 16 | DeepSeek V4-Flash [max] | 53% | $0.10 | 108k | 153 |
| 17 | Muse Spark 1.1 [xhigh] | 53% | $2.36 | 74k | 96 |
| 18 | GPT-5.4 [xhigh] | 52% | $5.65 | 71k | 70 |
| 19 | Gemini 3.6 Flash [high] | 47% | $4.42 | 96k | 117 |
| 20 | GLM 5.2 [max] | 44% | $3.92 | 78k | 129 |
| 21 | Gemini 3.5 Flash [high] | 36% | $3.45 | 76k | 105 |
| 22 | Kimi K2.7 Code | 31% | $2.82 | 59k | 149 |
| 23 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 [high] | 30% | $5.52 | 76k | 134 |
| 24 | Gemini 3.1 Pro [high] | 12% | $2.14 | 28k | 76 |
DeepSWE “Best” picks the highest published reasoning effort per model (not the highest pass rate). Small gaps may not be statistically meaningful — confirm on deepswe.datacurve.ai.
Common questions
Claude Fable 5 vs Claude Opus 5
Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.
Is Claude Fable 5 or Claude Opus 5 cheaper for input?
Claude Opus 5 is cheaper at $5 per million input tokens, against $10 for Claude Fable 5 — roughly 2.0× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate.
Is Claude Fable 5 or Claude Opus 5 cheaper for output?
Claude Opus 5 is cheaper at $25 per million output tokens, against $50 for Claude Fable 5 — roughly 2.0× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate.
Which has the larger context window, Claude Fable 5 or Claude Opus 5?
Both accept about 1M tokens of context, so document length will not decide between them.
Do Claude Fable 5 and Claude Opus 5 support the same reasoning levels?
Yes — both accept the same effort settings: "low", "medium", "high", "xhigh", "max". Higher effort costs more and takes longer, so start low and raise it only where output quality actually improves.
Should I use Claude Fable 5 or Claude Opus 5?
Both sit in the frontier tier, so the choice usually comes down to price and context rather than capability. Claude Fable 5 suits work where capability outweighs cost entirely; Claude Opus 5 suits agentic coding.
Next step
Choosing between them
Tier and workload decide this more reliably than a leaderboard position does.
If both sit in the same tier, the decision usually comes down to context window and output price rather than headline capability — output tokens dominate real bills.
If one is a step up within the same provider, the useful question is whether your hardest task actually fails on the cheaper tier. Most production volume — classification, extraction, summarization — does not.
Choosing a harness rather than a model — Cursor, Copilot, Claude Code, Muse Code, or Lovable? Compare agentic harnesses · Latest releases.