TL;DR — Claude Opus 5 costs $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens — a striking 3× price cut from Opus 4's $15/$75. Cache hits bill at ~10% of input, and the Batch API halves both sides (discounts stack). The frontier tier above it is Claude Fable 5 at $10/$50. This reprices the entire top of the market: frontier reasoning that cost $0.09 per typical call on Opus 4 now costs $0.03.
Official pricing (as of August 2026)
| | Input /1M | Output /1M | |---|-----------|------------| | Claude Opus 5 | $5.00 | $25.00 | | Cache hits | ~10% of input rate | — | | Batch API | $2.50 (-50%) | $12.50 (-50%) | | Reference: Opus 4 | $15.00 | $75.00 |
The batch discount stacks with prompt caching — a cached batch request can cost as little as ~5% of a standard call. For agents with stable system prompts, effective input costs land far below the headline rate.
What this costs in practice
- Coding agent planning calls (20/day, ~4K in / 1K out): ~$1.35/month — frontier reasoning is no longer the budget item it was
- Heavy agentic session (500K in / 100K out): $5.00 — versus $15.00 on Opus 4
- Batch + cache pipeline: the same session as low as ~$1.50
How it compares
| Model | Input /1M | Output /1M | Note | |-------|-----------|------------|------| | Claude Fable 5 | $10.00 | $50.00 | New top tier | | Claude Opus 5 | $5.00 | $25.00 | This page | | GPT-5.5 | $5.00 | $30.00 | Comparable input, pricier output | | Claude Sonnet 5 | $2.00 | $10.00 | Promo pricing through Aug 31, 2026 | | Claude Haiku 4.5 | $1.00 | $5.00 | Details |
Where it fits in a routing strategy
Opus 5's cut changes routing thresholds: calls that were borderline 'too expensive for frontier' now clear the bar, so well-tuned routers send more traffic to the frontier tier than six months ago while still cutting total spend — the pricing-trends guide tracks this repricing wave. ClawRouters picks the tier per request so you inherit price cuts automatically.
Prices from the provider's official rate card as of August 2026 — verify at the source before committing to volume, as rates change with model launches. Full market context: 2026 AI pricing guide · routing basics.