Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Fable 5
Anthropic now sells two frontier models where the cheaper one wins most of the published comparisons. Claude Opus 5 is $5 input and $25 output per million tokens. Claude Fable 5 is $10 and $50, exactly double. On Anthropic's own launch table Opus 5 leads Fable 5 on computer use (70.6 to 66.1), agentic search (90.8 to 87.4), knowledge work (1861 to 1747), agentic terminal coding (43.3 to 33.7), business workflows (26.0 to 17.4), and Humanity's Last Exam with tools (64.7 to 63.9). Fable 5 holds narrow leads on FrontierCode (53.5 to 53.4), DeepSWE (69.7 to 68.8), and Humanity's Last Exam without tools (56.5 to 56.3), and its Health and Biology headline rows are Mythos 5 ceilings rather than Fable 5 scores. Anthropic still describes Fable 5 as its highest-capability tier, so read this as a positioning claim the published benchmarks do not currently support at the row level. Every figure here is vendor-reported.
Head-to-Head Specs
| Spec | Claude Opus 5 | Claude Fable 5 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Input Price | $5.00/1M | $10.00/1M |
| Output Price | $25.00/1M | $50.00/1M |
| Context Window | 1M | 1M |
| Released | 2026-07 | 2026-06 |
| Capabilities | text, vision, tool-use, code, reasoning | text, vision, tool-use, code |
Benchmark Scores
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5 | Claude Fable 5 | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| OSWorld 2.0 | 70.6 | 66.1 | Claude |
| BrowseComp | 90.8 | 87.4 | Claude |
| FrontierCode v1.1 | 53.4 | 53.5 | Claude |
| Humanity's Last Exam (tools) | 64.7 | 63.9 | Claude |
See the full benchmark leaderboard for all models.
Category Breakdown
Opus 5 is $5/$25 against Fable 5 at $10/$50, exactly half
Opus 5 scores 70.6 vs Fable 5 at 66.1
Opus 5 scores 90.8 vs Fable 5 at 87.4
Opus 5 scores 1861 vs Fable 5 at 1747
Opus 5 scores 43.3 vs Fable 5 at 33.7
Opus 5 scores 26.0 vs Fable 5 at 17.4, the widest proportional gap on the table
Fable 5 scores 69.7 vs Opus 5 at 68.8
Fable 5 scores 53.5 vs Opus 5 at 53.4, inside any reasonable margin
Fable 5 scores 13.3 vs Opus 5 at 11.7 on the held-out split
Opus 5 accepts disabled thinking at effort high or below; on Fable 5 thinking is always on and cannot be disabled at all
Both ship 1 million tokens with up to 128K output
Choose Claude Opus 5 when:
- ▸Almost every workload, given half the price and the majority of published wins
- ▸Computer use, agentic search, and business-process automation
- ▸Routes that need the option to disable thinking for latency
- ▸Cost-sensitive deployments that still want frontier-tier capability
Choose Claude Fable 5 when:
- ▸Coding pipelines where the sub-point DeepSWE and FrontierCode edges are worth double the rate
- ▸Legal agent workloads, the one row with a clear Fable 5 margin
- ▸Existing deployments already tuned to Fable 5 with no reason to re-test
- ▸Teams that want Anthropic's nominal top capability tier regardless of row-level results
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better, Claude Opus 5 or Claude Fable 5?
It depends on your use case. Claude Opus 5 from Anthropic excels at almost every workload, given half the price and the majority of published wins, while Claude Fable 5 from Anthropic is better for coding pipelines where the sub-point deepswe and frontiercode edges are worth double the rate. See the full comparison above for detailed benchmarks and pricing.
How much does Claude Opus 5 cost compared to Claude Fable 5?
Claude Opus 5 costs $5.00 input and $25.00 output per 1M tokens. Claude Fable 5 costs $10.00 input and $50.00 output per 1M tokens.
What is the context window difference between Claude Opus 5 and Claude Fable 5?
Claude Opus 5 supports 1M tokens, while Claude Fable 5 supports 1M tokens.