Anthropic launches Claude Opus 5.5, claiming flagship performance at 40% lower cost
Anthropic has launched Claude Opus 5.5, the first model in its new 5.5 family, priced at $4/$20 per million tokens and claiming Fable 5.1-level performance on most work.
Anthropic has launched Claude Opus 5.5, the first model in its Claude 5.5 family, claiming flagship-level performance at a lower price.
Anthropic says Opus 5.5 matches top-tier Claude Fable 5.1 on most work while costing about 40% less to run than Opus 5, 9to5Mac reported — just two months after Opus 5 launched on 24 July. Input and output tokens are priced at $4 and $20 per million — 20% below Opus 5’s $5 and $25 — cache reads drop 60% to $0.20 per million, and output runs more than 30% faster.
On Anthropic’s benchmarks, the model beats OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra on most categories: 66.4% on Terminal-Bench 4.0 against Astra’s 57.9%, 54.4% on FrontierCode v1.1, an Elo of 1846 on GDPval-AA v2.1 versus Astra’s 1542, and 67.7% with tools on Humanity’s Last Exam, OfficeChai reported — though Astra leads on two of the tested categories, including AutomationBench.
With biology and cybersecurity capabilities close to Claude Mythos 5.1, it ships with Fable-level safeguards: most cybersecurity tasks are quietly rerouted to the older Opus 4.8, and deeper biology work requires vetted access through Anthropic’s Life Sciences Verification Program. Evaluated pre-release by METR and Frontier Design, Anthropic says it is its best-scoring model on its most comprehensive alignment test — its first release since chief executive Dario Amodei called for the industry to “pace the frontier”.
Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku 5.5 follow “in the coming weeks”, with five-hour usage limits raised on Pro, Max and Team plans, Anthropic says. The launch landed the same day OpenAI expanded its GPT-6 line-up with the lower-cost Sol and Luna models, Reuters reported.
Sources
- TechCrunch — Anthropic releases Opus 5.5 with lower prices and Fable-level performance
- 9to5Mac — Anthropic upgrades Claude with new Opus 5.5 model, details here
- OfficeChai — Anthropic Releases Claude Opus 5.5, Beats GPT-6 Astra On Most Benchmarks
- Reuters — OpenAI expands GPT-6 lineup with cheaper Sol and Luna models
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