Overview
Claude Opus 5 is Anthropic's new flagship large model released on July 23, 2026, with intelligence levels close to Claude Fable 5 but at half the price. It achieves over twice the performance of Opus 4.8 on Frontier-Bench v0.1 and scores three times higher than the next best model on ARC-AGI 3. Opus 5 becomes the default model for Claude Max and the most powerful model for Claude Pro effective immediately, serving as the direct successor to Opus 4.8.
Key Features
- Leap in Performance: Over twice the performance of Opus 4.8 on Frontier-Bench v0.1; three times the score of the next best model on ARC-AGI 3
- Half the Price: Intelligence close to Fable 5 but at half the cost, significantly improving cost-effectiveness
- Default Model for Claude Max: Becomes the default model for Max and the most powerful model for Pro, available immediately to subscribers
- Continued Agent and Coding Capabilities: Maintains the strengths of the Opus series in multi-step reasoning, autonomous Agent operations, and complex programming
- 1M Token Context: Retains long-context capability, suitable for full-codebase and long-document analysis
Use Cases
- Complex software engineering tasks (architecture design / large-scale refactoring)
- Scientific, legal, and financial analysis requiring multi-step reasoning
- Autonomous Agent scenarios (computer use / long-chain tool calls)
- Enterprise scenarios with high reliability requirements
Pros
- Performance doubled compared to the previous generation, industry-leading level
- Half the price, greatly improved cost-effectiveness
- Becomes the default model for Max, available to subscribers immediately
- Continued Agent and coding capabilities from the Opus series
Pricing
Opus 5 becomes the default model for Claude Max, and Pro users can access the most powerful model. API pricing is half that of Opus 4.8; refer to the official Anthropic website for details. Available on Claude.ai Pro at $20/month and higher tiers for Max.
Summary
Claude Opus 5 is Anthropic's flagship leap in mid-2026, doubling performance while halving the price, and directly becomes the default model for Max. If you are using Opus 4.8, upgrading to Opus 5 is a no-brainer: stronger and cheaper. Ideal for enterprise users with the highest model requirements, Agent developers, and complex programming scenarios.
Version History
- Opus 5 Official Release (2026-07-23): Performance over twice that of Opus 4.8, half the price; significant leads on Frontier-Bench v0.1 and ARC-AGI 3; becomes the default model for Claude Max and the most powerful model for Pro