Claude Opus 5 review, pricing and verdict

Claude Opus 5 launched July 24, 2026 with a 1 million token context window and a new xhigh reasoning effort mode. Anthropic replaced it as the recommended Opus with Opus 5.5 on September 22, 2026, though Opus 5 stays active until at least July 2027.

Claude Opus 5 is a large language model from Anthropic, released July 24, 2026, scoring 97.0% on SWE-bench Verified and 94.1 on GPQA Diamond. It has a 1 million token context window. Anthropic now recommends Claude Opus 5.5 instead, while Opus 5 remains active with retirement not sooner than July 2027.

Provider: Anthropic · Family: Claude 5

More about Anthropic on HokAI

Context window: 1,000,000 tokens · Max output: 128,000

Input modalities: text, image, pdf, tool-calls · Output: text, tool-calls

About Claude Opus 5

Anthropic shipped Claude Opus 5 on July 24, 2026 as the successor to Claude Opus 4.8. At launch it was the flagship of the Claude 5 lineup, built for teams that need deep reasoning and long agentic runs. Anthropic released Claude Opus 5.5 on September 22, 2026, and its models overview now tells new users to start with Opus 5.5; Opus 5 stays Active, with no deprecation announced and retirement not sooner than July 24, 2027. The model surfaced briefly under the codename Honeycomb EAP inside Cursor's model picker on July 9, 2026 before Anthropic pulled it, then completed a full rollout two weeks later.

On SWE-bench Verified, Opus 5 scores 97.0%, the highest recorded result published on that benchmark to date. On SWE-bench Pro, a harder agentic-coding suite, it reaches 79.2%, up 10 points from Opus 4.8's 69.2%. GPQA Diamond, the graduate-level science reasoning benchmark, comes in at 94.1%. On ARC-AGI-3 at high reasoning effort, Opus 5 posts 30.16%, roughly 20 times Opus 4.8's score on the same test and about 4 times GPT-5.6 Sol Max. Artificial Analysis puts its composite Intelligence Index at 61 in max-effort mode, well above the 32 median for comparable frontier models.

The model ships with a 1 million token context window, both the default and the ceiling, so there is no smaller-context variant to choose. Max output is 128,000 tokens through the standard Messages API, extending to 300,000 tokens through the Message Batches API with a beta header. Extended thinking is on by default, a change from Opus 4.8 where it shipped off by default, and Opus 5 adds a new xhigh reasoning-effort tier above low, medium, high, and max.

Opus 5 takes text, image, and PDF input and returns text output, with tool-calling built into both directions. It reads charts, documents, and diagrams and is strongest at replicating UI and frontend visuals when given tools to crop, re-render, and check its own output iteratively rather than in one pass. Tool lists can now be added or removed mid-conversation without breaking the prompt cache. Anthropic also reports that Opus 5 verifies its own work without being asked, so verification instructions written for earlier models can trigger redundant double-checking on Opus 5.

Pricing is unchanged from Opus 4.8 at $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens. Fast Mode runs at roughly 2.5x output speed for $10 input and $50 output per million tokens. Batch API discounts standard pricing 50%, to $2.50 input and $12.50 output per million tokens. Prompt caching now activates from 512 cached tokens, down from 1,024 on Opus 4.8, and cuts input cost up to 90% on repeat-context workloads.

Opus 5 is reachable through the direct Anthropic API under the model ID claude-opus-5, through Amazon Bedrock as anthropic.claude-opus-5, and through Google Vertex AI as claude-opus-5. It is available today on Claude Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise plans, and replaced Opus 4.8 as the default Opus model at launch, a role Opus 5.5 now holds.

Training data runs through a cutoff of May 2026. Anthropic's own automated behavioral audit gives Opus 5 the lowest misalignment score the company has recorded for any model, including its own more restricted Mythos 5 variant, and the model cooperates with misuse attempts less than any prior Claude release. The Opus 5 system card also documents a less flattering result from the UK AI Security Institute: given a simulated, standard-but-not-hardened enterprise network, Opus 5 completed the intrusion attack path in 8 of 10 attempts, a sign of how far its offensive cyber capability has advanced alongside its coding scores.

Opus 5 fits teams already running long autonomous coding or research agents on it. New projects should compare it against Claude Opus 5.5, which Anthropic lists at $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output, below Opus 5's $5 and $25. It is a poor fit for latency-sensitive interactive products: output speed of roughly 54 tokens per second and time-to-first-token near 2.4 to 3.9 seconds trail lighter models built for chat, where Claude Sonnet 5 or Claude Haiku 4.5 are the better match. Switching from Opus 4.8 also brings breaking changes: thinking: disabled combined with effort xhigh or max now returns a 400 error, and the speed: fast parameter inherited from Opus 4.7 has been removed, so requests using it now error instead of falling back to standard speed.

Pricing

$5 per 1M input tokens, $25 per 1M output tokens, unchanged from Opus 4.8. Fast Mode is $10/$50 per 1M for roughly 2.5x faster output. Batch API is 50% off at $2.50/$12.50. Prompt caching activates from 512 tokens and cuts input cost up to 90%.

What a real job costs

Budgets: 20-page PDF = 30k in / 1k out · Support reply = 2k in / 300 out · Coding agent run = 200k in / 20k out. Computed from the vendor's per-token prices at render time; cached-input discounts are not applied.

Key Features

• 1 Million Token Context: Default and maximum context length of 1,000,000 tokens, extendable to 300,000 output tokens via the Batch API with a beta header.
• xhigh Reasoning Effort: A new top reasoning-effort tier above low, medium, high, and max, with thinking enabled by default.
• Mid-conversation Tool Swapping: Tools can be added or removed between turns without resending the schema or breaking the prompt cache.
• Lower Prompt Cache Minimum: Cached input activates from a much smaller token minimum than the prior Opus release, cutting repeat-context costs sharply.
• Vision For Charts And UI: Reads charts, documents, and diagrams and replicates UI and frontend visuals, strongest when given tools to crop and re-check its own output.

Pros

• Tops SWE-bench Verified at 97.0%, with SWE-bench Pro also improving sharply to 79.2%.
• 1M token context is the default, not an upsell tier, so there's no context-size decision to make.
• Fast Mode and Batch API options give real speed and cost tradeoffs without switching models.

Cons

• Output speed near 54 tokens per second trails lighter reasoning models built for chat.
• No audio or video input, so voice and video agent workloads need a separate model.
• UK AISI red-teaming completed a simulated network intrusion in the large majority of test attempts, a capability jump worth extra review for high-security deployments.

Benchmarks

• ARC-AGI 3: 30.2% independent · 08 Oct 2026 — Interactive abstract puzzles, the third ARC series, % solved.
• GPQA Diamond: 94.1% vendor-reported · 08 Oct 2026 — PhD-level science questions that are hard to search for, % correct.
• SWE-bench Pro: 79.2% vendor-reported · 08 Oct 2026 — Harder, longer real-repository coding tasks, % solved.
• SWE-bench Verified: 97% vendor-reported · 08 Oct 2026 — Real GitHub issues fixed end to end, % solved.
• AA Intelligence Index: 61 cited: Artificial Analysis · 08 Oct 2026 — Composite of 10 evaluations run by Artificial Analysis, 0 to 100.
• Output speed: 54 tok/s cited: Artificial Analysis · 08 Oct 2026 — Median tokens written per second as measured by Artificial Analysis.

A benchmark is an exam, not the job. Scores transfer unevenly between tasks, so weigh the one closest to your workload and read every figure with its source.

Visit Claude Opus 5 Official Page