Anthropic shipped Claude Opus 5 on 24 July. Official pricing: five dollars per million input tokens, twenty-five per million output. The same as Opus 4.8 before it.
The model got faster and more cost-efficient on the same work, and it is now the default on Claude Max.
What actually changed
Three things you notice in practice:
- Speed. On long agentic runs the difference is visible without a stopwatch.
- Mid-conversation tool changes. The tool set used to be fixed at the start of a conversation; now it can change as you go.
- Automatic fallback. If a safety classifier flags a request it routes to Opus 4.8 instead of failing.
When Opus is the wrong choice
The most common mistake is running the flagship on everything. Output costs five times input, and the gap between Opus and the smaller models is larger still.
Opus earns its price when a task needs many relationships held at once: reading an unfamiliar repository, refactoring across a dozen files, chasing a race condition.
Opus is wasted on parsing a log, rewriting text, generating boilerplate from a pattern, or classifying inbound messages. A smaller model does that just as well for a fraction of the bill.
How your bill is computed
The formula is simple:
cost = (input_tokens × input_rate + output_tokens × output_rate) / 1,000,000
The part people miss: output costs five times input. So a long context in the prompt is almost always cheaper than a long answer.
Practical takeaway: do not fear putting plenty of context in, fear asking for a verbose answer out.
Three ways to pay less
One. Split models by task. Let Opus think and let a smaller model do the mechanics.
Two. Ask for short answers in the prompt itself. A line like "reply with code only, no explanation" cuts output tokens noticeably.
Three. Watch spend before the invoice arrives. A monthly cap with an alert at seventy percent beats a post-mortem.
What it costs in your case
Abstract rates say little. We put a calculator on the site: pick a model, enter your token volumes, see the number. Presets for typical scenarios are there and every field stays editable.
Access from Russia
Paying Anthropic directly with a Russian card does not work: the payment is cut at BIN level before it reaches the service. Through Claudexia, Opus 5 is available with no Anthropic account and no VPN, paid by SBP, card, MTS or crypto.