Standard Compute
Model comparison 2026

Claude Fable 5 vs Claude Opus 5.5

Claude Fable 5
Anthropic · Frontier · Proprietary
$22/1M · 1M ctx
Claude Opus 5.5
Anthropic · Frontier · Proprietary
$8.80/1M · 1M ctx

Community vote

Pick a winner in each dimension. You can change your vote any time.

Output Quality
Correctness and depth of what it produces
Agentic Ability
Tool calls, instruction-following, and multi-step tasks
Speed
Tokens per second and time-to-first-token
Value for money
How much capability you get per dollar
Reliability
Consistent results: fewer refusals, loops and format breaks

Specs and pricing side by side

Spec
Fable 5
Opus 5.5
Maker
Anthropic
Anthropic
Blended price / 1M
$22
$8.80
Input / output
$10 in · $50 out / 1M tokens
$4.00 in · $20 out / 1M tokens
Context window
1M
1M
Open weights
No
No
Tool use
Yes
Yes
Reasoning
Yes
Yes
Output Quality
9.6
10.0
Agentic Ability
9.5
10.0
Speed
6.8
7.6
Value for money
6.8
7.4
Reliability
9.6
9.5

Pricing and capabilities synced from the OpenRouter catalogue. Scores are editorial (0–10).

Verdict: Fable 5 or Opus 5.5?

Updated 2026-10-13

Choose Claude Fable 5 if you want the hardest autonomous coding and reasoning work, where the quality ceiling pays for itself. Choose Claude Opus 5.5 if you want the hardest coding and agent work, as the default flagship instead of Fable.

In our editorial scoring, Claude Opus 5.5 leads in 4 of five dimensions (output quality, agentic ability, speed and value for money), while Claude Fable 5 leads in 1. On price, Claude Fable 5 runs about $22 per 1M tokens (blended) and is proprietary; Claude Opus 5.5 is about $8.80 and proprietary.

Where Fable 5 falls short
  • Premium pricing — roughly 2x Opus 4.8 per token
  • Overkill for routine agent steps; escalation-tier economics
Full Fable 5 breakdown →
Where Opus 5.5 falls short
  • Twice Sonnet 5.5's price per token for a small measured gain
  • Released September 2026, so its long-run track record is still short
Full Opus 5.5 breakdown →

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