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 route 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 |
| JSON / 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.
Continue comparing
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Last reviewed: 2026-07-26. Data sourced from public model cards and provider documentation.