LLM Reference
GCP Vertex AI

Using Claude Opus 4.8 on GCP Vertex AI

Implementation guide · Claude 4.8 · Anthropic

Serverless

GCP Vertex AI exposes Claude Opus 4.8 through model ID claude-opus-4-8. Use the setup steps, sourced pricing, capabilities, and official provider links below to validate this route before deployment.

Last refreshed 2026-07-26. Next refresh: weekly.

Quick Start

  1. 1
    Create an account at GCP Vertex AI and generate an API key.
  2. 2
    Use the GCP Vertex AI SDK or REST API to call claude-opus-4-8 — see the documentation for request format.

Code Examples

Install
pip install google-cloud-aiplatform
API key
GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT
Model ID
claude-opus-4-8

For Google-published models use the model name directly, e.g. "gemini-2.0-flash-001". For third-party publishers (Anthropic, Meta, etc.) use the full publisher path, e.g. "publishers/anthropic/models/claude-3-5-sonnet-v2@20241022".

import os
import vertexai
from vertexai.generative_models import GenerativeModel

# Reads GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT from env; authenticates via Application Default Credentials
vertexai.init(project=os.environ["GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT"], location="us-central1")
model = GenerativeModel("claude-opus-4-8")
response = model.generate_content("Hello")
print(response.text)

Pricing on GCP Vertex AI

Capabilities

VisionMultimodalReasoningJSON / Tool useStructured OutputsCode ExecutionPrompt CachingBatch API

About Claude Opus 4.8

Claude Opus 4.8 is Anthropic's flagship Claude 4.8 model, released May 28, 2026 for agentic coding, long-horizon reasoning, computer use, and professional knowledge work. It supports text and image inputs, adaptive reasoning, tool use, structured outputs, computer-use tools, prompt caching, Batch API, Dynamic Workflows parallel subagents, a 1M-token context window on Anthropic API/Bedrock/Vertex, and 128K max output. Key datapack rows: SWE-bench Pro 69.2%, SWE-bench Verified 88.6%, Terminal-Bench 2.1 74.6%, HLE with tools 57.9%, OSWorld-Verified 83.4%, GDPval-AA 1890 Elo, and MCP-Atlas 82.2%. Standard Anthropic API pricing is $5/M input and $25/M output.

Model Specs

Released2026-05-28
Context1m
ArchitectureDecoder Only
Knowledge cutoff2026-01

Provider

GCP Vertex AI
GCP Vertex AI

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Mountain View, California, United States