Claude Opus 4.8 vs Claude Opus 5
Claude Opus 5 is Anthropic's July 2026 successor to Claude Opus 4.8, but this is an upgrade decision rather than a simple price-tier change. Both models keep a 1M-token context window, 128K synchronous output, $5 per million input / $25 per million output standard Claude API pricing, and the same five effort levels. The API behavior changes because Opus 5 uses adaptive thinking by default, while Opus 4.8 requests run without thinking unless callers enable adaptive thinking; Opus 4.8 remains a valid, non-deprecated route for workloads already calibrated to its behavior.
Choose Claude Opus 5 for new complex agentic coding and enterprise work, or when Anthropic's migration guidance and default adaptive-thinking behavior justify revalidation. Keep Opus 4.8 during a controlled migration when production prompts, safeguards, latency, or provider behavior are already qualified. Base price, headline context limits, and available effort levels do not decide this pair because they are the same; test the exact thinking mode, effort setting, and provider route that you plan to ship.
Decision scorecard
Local evidence first| Signal | Claude Opus 4.8 | Claude Opus 5 |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | reasoning-heavy apps, multimodal apps, and tool-calling agents | reasoning-heavy apps, multimodal apps, and tool-calling agents |
| Decision fit | Coding, RAG, and Agents | Coding, RAG, and Agents |
| Context window | 1m | 1m |
| Cheapest output | $25/1M tokens | $25/1M tokens |
| Provider routes | 6 tracked | 7 tracked |
| Shared benchmarks | 0 shared | 0 shared |
Decision tradeoffs
- Claude Opus 4.8 uniquely exposes Parallel agents in local model data.
- Local decision data tags Claude Opus 4.8 for Coding, RAG, and Agents.
- Claude Opus 5 has broader tracked provider coverage for fallback and procurement flexibility.
- Local decision data tags Claude Opus 5 for Coding, RAG, and Agents.
Monthly cost at traffic
Estimate token spend from the cheapest tracked input and output route or tier on this page.
Claude Opus 4.8
$10,250
Cheapest tracked route/tier: Anthropic
Claude Opus 5
$10,250
Cheapest tracked route/tier: Anthropic
Estimated monthly gap: $0.00. Batch, cache, alternate speed tiers, and negotiated pricing are excluded from this local estimate.
Switch friction
- Provider overlap exists on Anthropic, AWS Bedrock, and GCP Vertex AI; start route-level A/B tests there.
- Cheapest tracked output pricing is tied, so migration risk shifts to quality, latency, and provider packaging.
- Check replacement coverage for Parallel agents before moving production traffic.
- Provider overlap exists on Anthropic, AWS Bedrock, and GCP Vertex AI; start route-level A/B tests there.
- Cheapest tracked output pricing is tied, so migration risk shifts to quality, latency, and provider packaging.
- Claude Opus 4.8 adds Parallel agents in local capability data.
Specs
| Specification | ||
|---|---|---|
| Released | 2026-05-28 | 2026-07-24 |
| Context window | 1m | 1m |
| Parameters | — | — |
| Architecture | Decoder Only | Decoder Only |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Openness | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Weights | Not released | Not released |
| Code | Not released | Not released |
| Commercial use | Commercial use: conditional | Commercial use: conditional |
| Knowledge cutoff | 2026-01 | 2026-05 |
Pricing and availability
| Pricing attribute | Claude Opus 4.8 | Claude Opus 5 |
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $5/1M tokens | $5/1M tokens |
| Output price | $25/1M tokens | $25/1M tokens |
| Providers |
Capabilities
| Capability | Claude Opus 4.8 | Claude Opus 5 |
|---|---|---|
| Vision | Yes | Yes |
| Multimodal | Yes | Yes |
| Reasoning | Yes | Yes |
| Function calling | Yes | Yes |
| Tool use | Yes | Yes |
| Structured outputs | Yes | Yes |
| Code execution | Yes | Yes |
| IDE integration | No | No |
| Computer use | Yes | Yes |
| Parallel agents | Yes | No |
Benchmarks
No shared benchmark scores are currently available for this pair.
Deep dive
The direct Claude API price is unchanged: both models list $5/M input and $25/M output, with $2.50/$12.50 Batch API pricing and the same prompt-cache multipliers. Fast mode is a separate first-party research-preview surface at $10/$50, not a reason to overwrite standard pricing or infer the same premium mode on cloud partners.
Both models expose a 1M-token context window and 128K synchronous output. Anthropic separately documents up to 300K output on Message Batches behind a beta header, so the model comparison keeps 128K as the normal maximum instead of presenting the batch-only limit as universal.
The curated head-to-head suppresses SWE-bench Pro and SWE-bench Verified because the available rows use different evaluator, harness, and launch settings. Use each model's benchmark page for source-specific evidence rather than calculating a cross-model delta from those rows.
Migration changes the API model ID to claude-opus-5 and makes adaptive thinking the default. Both models accept low, medium, high, xhigh, and max effort, with high as the API default; on Opus 5, effort controls thinking volume and token use rather than visible response length. Anthropic has not marked Opus 4.8 deprecated in the sources used here, so keep the predecessor route available while prompts, fallbacks, safety-sensitive tasks, and cloud deployments are requalified.
FAQ
Does Claude Opus 5 cost more than Opus 4.8?
No on the standard Claude API tier. Both are listed at $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens, with Batch API pricing at $2.50/$12.50. Fast mode is a separate $10/$50 first-party option.
Do Opus 5 and Opus 4.8 have the same context window?
Yes. Both are documented with a 1M-token context window and 128K synchronous output. The separately documented 300K batch output beta should not replace the normal 128K limit.
Is Claude Opus 4.8 deprecated?
Not in the sources used for this update. Anthropic publishes migration guidance to Opus 5, but the seed keeps Opus 4.8 active until a separate first-party deprecation notice exists.
Should existing Opus 4.8 users migrate immediately?
Use a controlled migration. Opus 5 is the forward model for complex agentic work, but production teams should re-test prompts, effort settings, safeguards, latency, fallbacks, and their exact provider route before switching all traffic.
Continue comparing
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Last reviewed: 2026-07-26. Data sourced from public model cards and provider documentation.