Claude Fable vs Claude Opus
The within-Claude question. Fable 5 is the ceiling and costs twice Opus 5. Opus 5 landed in July 2026 delivering near-Fable capability at half the price, which made Fable a specialist rather than a default. Start on Opus and escalate only when you can point at a task it actually fails.
| Claude Fable | Claude Opus | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Current release | Fable 5 | Opus 5 |
| Tier | Frontier | Frontier |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Cost | Frontier price | Premium |
| Modalities | text, vision | text, vision |
| Open weights | No | No |
Cost is a tier, not a quote — providers change prices often. Check Anthropic and Anthropic before you commit. Last updated 2026-08-14.
Which one to pick
Claude FableAnthropic · Fable 5
The ceiling — problems where being right matters more than the bill
Reach for it when- The genuinely hardest problems where being right dominates cost
- Work you cannot easily verify yourself
Claude OpusAnthropic · Opus 5
Agentic coding and multi-step engineering work — near the ceiling, at half the price
Reach for it when- Almost everything else — it is the better price-to-capability trade
- High-volume agentic work where the 2x multiplier compounds
Related comparisons
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- Claude Opus vs Claude SonnetThe one most Claude users get wrong by defaulting up.
- Claude Opus vs KimiClosed frontier against the open model that got closest to it.