By the toolist.ai editors. Researched from public sources, not hands-on tested by toolist.ai. Updated October 6, 2026; prices checked October 6, 2026.
Claude Opus 5: price, context window and benchmarks
Claude Opus 5 is Anthropic's previous Opus model, released in July 2026 at $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens. Since September 22 it is a legacy model: Claude Opus 5.5 costs less and scores higher on every benchmark both models have a score for, so new projects should start there.
Best for
- Existing integrations that need thinking switched off, which Opus 5 still allows at high effort or below
- Teams that have tuned prompts for it and want time before moving to Opus 5.5
- Reproducing published results that were run on Opus 5
Key facts
| Fact | Claude Opus 5 | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Claude docs: Pricing |
| API model name | claude-opus-5 | Claude docs: Claude Opus 5 |
| Released | July 24, 2026 | Anthropic: Introducing Claude Opus 5 |
| Input price | $5 per million tokens | Claude docs: Pricing |
| Cached input price | $0.50 per million tokens | Claude docs: Pricing |
| Output price | $25 per million tokens | Claude docs: Pricing |
| Context window | 1,000,000 tokens | Claude docs: Claude Opus 5 |
| Maximum output | 128,000 tokens | Claude docs: Claude Opus 5 |
| Knowledge cutoff | May 2026 | Claude docs: Claude Opus 5 |
| Input and output | Text and images in; text out | Claude docs: Claude Opus 5 |
| Reasoning | Adaptive thinking on by default; it can be switched off at high effort or below. Effort levels low to max; high is the API default | Claude docs: What's new in Claude Opus 5.5 (Opus 5 thinking rules) |
| API and cloud platforms | Claude API, Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud and Microsoft Foundry; legacy model, retirement no sooner than July 24, 2027 | Claude docs: Claude Opus 5 |
Cache writes cost $6.25 per million tokens (5-minute cache) or $10 (1-hour cache). The Batch API costs half. There is no long-context surcharge. Fast mode costs $10 in and $50 out.
What Claude Opus 5 costs a month
Three typical workloads, priced at the standard API rates above. We calculated these; the provider does not publish them.
| Workload | Tokens a month | Cost a month |
|---|---|---|
| Support chatbot 100,000 replies, each 3,000 input and 400 output tokens, no caching | 300M in, 40M out | $2,500 |
| Document Q&A 5,000 questions over the same 60,000-token document set (90% cache hits), 800 output tokens each | 300M in, 4M out | $385 |
| Coding agent 200 tasks, each 1.5 million input tokens (90% cache hits) and 50,000 output tokens | 300M in, 10M out | $535 |
Reasoning models bill their thinking as output tokens, so heavy reasoning can raise the output count several times. Cache-write charges are not included.
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Score | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index max effort | 50.8 | Artificial Analysis: Claude Opus 5 (max) |
| Intelligence Index at everyday effort high effort, the API default | 48.1 | Artificial Analysis: Claude Opus 5 (high) |
| Coding Agent Index Claude Code harness, max effort | 59.7 | Artificial Analysis: Coding agents |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 max effort | 49.0% | Artificial Analysis: Claude Opus 5 (max) |
| Humanity's Last Exam max effort | 54.9% | Artificial Analysis: Claude Opus 5 (max) |
| GDPval-AA v2.1 (Elo) max effort | 1724 | Artificial Analysis: Claude Opus 5 (max) |
| SciCode max effort | 56.4% | Artificial Analysis: Claude Opus 5 (max) |
| Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 max effort | 28.6% | Artificial Analysis: Claude Opus 5 (max) |
| GPQA Diamond max effort | 93.2% | Artificial Analysis: Claude Opus 5 (max) |
Speed: about 56.2 output tokens a second, 21.4 seconds to the first token (high effort, Anthropic API; Artificial Analysis: Claude Opus 5 (high)).
Benchmark and speed data marked as such come from Artificial Analysis.
What changed
Opus 5 kept Opus 4.8's price of $5 and $25 per million tokens. Anthropic said at launch that it came close to Claude Fable 5 at half the price. Claude Opus 5.5 replaced it as the recommended Opus on September 22, 2026. (Anthropic: Introducing Claude Opus 5)
Claude Opus 5 compared
Other models
- GPT-6.1 Sol: $2 in, $10 out per million tokens
- Claude Opus 5.5: $4 in, $20 out per million tokens
- GPT-6 Sol: $2 in, $10 out per million tokens
- GPT-6 Astra: $10 in, $50 out per million tokens
- Claude Fable 5.1: $10 in, $50 out per million tokens
All prices side by side: AI model API price table. How we research: our method.
Sources
- Anthropic: Introducing Claude Opus 5 (checked 2026-10-06)
- Claude docs: Claude Opus 5 (checked 2026-10-06)
- Claude docs: Pricing (checked 2026-10-06)
- Claude docs: What's new in Claude Opus 5.5 (Opus 5 thinking rules) (checked 2026-10-06)
- Artificial Analysis: Claude Opus 5 (max) (checked 2026-10-06)
- Artificial Analysis: Claude Opus 5 (high) (checked 2026-10-06)
- Artificial Analysis: Coding agents (checked 2026-10-06)
- OpenRouter: Claude Opus 5 (checked 2026-10-06)