Anthropic Claude Opus 5 — what it is, when to use it and what to use instead

Summary

Claude Opus 5 is Anthropic's current top-tier general model, at $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens with a 1M-token context window and 128K max output. Anthropic positions it as its default choice for complex agentic coding and enterprise work.

Opus is the capability tier above Sonnet and below Fable in the Claude line. Claude Opus 5 was released on 24 July 2026 and succeeds Claude Opus 4.8 at the same price, with a newer May 2026 knowledge cutoff.

It accepts text and image input and returns text. Adaptive thinking is on by default and is steered with the effort parameter, which defaults to high; thinking can only be disabled at effort high or below. Setting temperature, top_p or top_k to a non-default value returns a 400 error, as on every Claude model from Opus 4.7 onwards.

No deprecation has been announced. Anthropic commits to keeping Claude Opus 5 available until at least 24 July 2027.

Modality

• Text
• Vision

Use case

• Chat
• Coding
• Reasoning
• Agents & tool use
• Long context

Tier

• Frontier

Access

• Hosted API

Languages

• Multilingual

Specifications

Input price

$5.00 / M tokens

Output price

$25.00 / M tokens

Price band

Premium

Context window

1M tokens

Max output

128K tokens

Input

Text, image

Output

Text

Knowledge cutoff

May 2026

Tool use

Yes

Structured output

Yes

Weights licence

not published

Model maker

Anthropic

“unknown” means the figure has not been published, or we have not verified it yet — never that the answer is no. “not published” under the weights licence means this model is not offered with downloadable weights. The price band is ours: it bands the blended price (three parts input to one part output) as budget (≤ $0.50), standard (≤ $3), premium (≤ $12) or flagship.

Lifecycle

Anthropic has not announced a deprecation or shutdown date for this model. That is a statement about what has been published, not a guarantee — providers typically announce a shutdown months ahead, and this page updates when they do.

1. Released 24 July 2026
2. Deprecated not announced
3. Retired not announced

Use it for

• Run long agentic coding sessions across a large repository, using the 1M-token context window instead of chunking.
• Handle multi-step reasoning work where a mid-tier model needs several retries to get it right.
• Migrate off Claude Opus 4.8, 4.7, 4.6 or 4.5, all of which cost the same per token but carry older knowledge cutoffs.
• Generate long structured output up to 128K tokens in a single response.

Avoid it when

• You run high-volume, well-defined tasks; Claude Sonnet 5 costs $2 / $10 and Claude Haiku 4.5 costs $1 / $5 for the same kind of work.
• Your input includes audio or video; Claude Opus 5 accepts text and images only.
• Your code depends on temperature, top_p or top_k; non-default values return a 400 error.
• You need the lowest possible latency per call; Anthropic rates Opus 5 as moderate and Haiku 4.5 as the fastest in the line-up.

Alternatives to consider

• Claude Fable 5.1 Curated

  Anthropic ● Active

  The tier above, at $10 / $50 instead of $5 / $25, for demanding reasoning and long-horizon agentic work.

  $10.00 in · $50.00 out / M tokens · 1M context

• Claude Sonnet 5 Curated

  Anthropic ● Active

  The tier below at $2 / $10 with the same 1M-token context window, so the obvious step down when cost matters more than depth.

  $2.00 in · $10.00 out / M tokens · 1M context

• GPT-5.6 Sol Curated

  OpenAI ● Active

  OpenAI's flagship tier at $4 / $20 with a 1.05M-token context window and a February 2026 knowledge cutoff.

  $4.00 in · $20.00 out / M tokens · 1.1M context

• Gemini 3.8 Flash Curated

  Google (Gemini) ● Active

  Google's most intelligent Flash model, aimed at the same long-horizon agentic and enterprise work, at $0.75 / $3.75 and with audio, video and PDF input that Claude Opus 5 does not accept.

  $0.75 in · $3.75 out / M tokens · 1M context

• Claude Opus 4.5 Derived

  Amazon Bedrock ● Active

  Alternative from Amazon Bedrock, same tier (frontier), similar price; shares chat, coding, reasoning, agents and long-context.

  $5.00 in · $25.00 out / M tokens · 200K context

Curated suggestions were picked by a reviewer, with the reason written by hand. Derived suggestions are ranked from the data — shared tags, the same tier and a comparable price band — not from benchmark scores. Check the capability fit yourself: we track lifecycle, price and specifications.

Sources

• platform.claude.com ↗ https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/models/opus-5/overview
• platform.claude.com ↗ https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/models/overview
• platform.claude.com ↗ https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing
• platform.claude.com ↗ https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/model-deprecations

Verified against the source on 10 September 2026. Dataset snapshot 10 September 2026. Providers can change a date without notice — the link above is always the final word.

About this profile

The specifications and dates above are facts from Anthropic, with the sources listed. The summary, the use-for and avoid-when lists and the curated alternatives are our assessment: editorial profile reviewed on 21 September 2026 by llm-researcher.