Version

Claude Opus 5

Opus 5 shipped on 24 July 2026 and today sits first on the WebDev Arena leaderboard, at $5 in and $25 out per million tokens. For coding and multi-step agentic work it is our first pick, and there is no official route to it from Iran.

  • first on WebDev Arena
  • 1M token context window
  • knowledge cutoff May 2026

current Released: Maker: Anthropic

Last checked: This is a reference page. It is re-checked against the vendor sources and updated when a new version ships. What changed

What actually changed from 4.8

Two changes you feel in practice: the knowledge cutoff and the agentic behaviour. Opus 5 reads reliably through May 2026, where Opus 4.8 stopped at January 2026. On work tied to recent libraries or a framework that moved lately, those few months matter.

The price did not move. It is the same $5 and $25 as Opus 4.8, so upgrading costs nothing per unit, which is rarer than it should be.

Why the announcement numbers are not in our table

Anthropic published no absolute benchmark figures for Opus 5. The announcement talks about Frontier-Bench, ARC-AGI 3, Zapier AutomationBench and OSWorld, but every claim is relative: more than double Opus 4.8, three times the next-best model, within half a percent of Fable 5's peak at half the cost per task. None of that fits a column that needs an absolute number, so the Frontier-Bench cell in our coding table stays marked as unverified.

That is our limitation, not the model's. If Anthropic publishes figures, they go in the same day and may well move the ranking.

Fast mode, which is documented but rarely mentioned

Opus 5 has a fast mode that runs roughly 2.5 times quicker at twice the base price. For interactive work where a person is waiting, that trade usually pays. For an overnight batch it never does. Anyone costing a service on throughput needs to model it separately, or the invoice doubles and nobody can say why.

Specifications

API model ID claude-opus-5 Source
Released 2026-07-24 Source
Context window 1 million tokens Source
Max output 128k tokens Source
Input price $5 per million tokens Source
Output price $25 per million tokens Source
Knowledge cutoff 2026-05 Source
Open weights no Source
Input text, image Source
Output text Source
Where it ships Claude API, Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud, Microsoft Foundry Source

Using it from Iran

We check this ourselves from an Iranian connection, because no vendor documents it and every listicle guesses.

Reachable
blocked
Payment
no working route
Free tier
no
Measured on

How we checked: Iran appears on neither of Anthropic two supported-countries lists, the API one or the claude.ai one. We read that on Anthropic own page rather than measuring it: an independent network test has not been run yet, and when it is, it will be written here.

What it is good at

  • First on WebDev Arena at 1692, ahead of Kimi K3 Max and Qwen3.8 Max
  • The latest knowledge cutoff of any Anthropic model, May 2026
  • Identical pricing to Opus 4.8, so the upgrade carries no unit cost
  • Available on all four routes: Anthropic's own API, Bedrock, Google Cloud and Microsoft Foundry

Where it falls short

  • Anthropic published no absolute benchmark numbers, so part of our table is empty for it.
  • No official route from Iran: it is absent from the supported-countries list and Iranian cards do not work.
  • Fast mode costs double and will quietly double an invoice if nobody is watching.
  • On the general text leaderboard it ranks seventh, below several older Anthropic models, so it is not "best at everything".

Our take

For code it is our first pick today, and the table says the same. But if your work is general conversation rather than code, do not pay the premium: on the text leaderboard its gap to cheaper models is inside statistical noise.

Questions people actually ask

Is Opus 5 better than Fable 5

For code, yes. On WebDev Arena Opus 5 scores 1692 against Fable 5's 1628, at half the output price. Fable 5 is first on the general text leaderboard, so for conversation and long non-coding work it still sits higher.

Is upgrading from Opus 4.8 worth it

If your work is code, or needs knowledge past January 2026, yes, because the unit price is unchanged. If you have something stable built on 4.8 that does not depend on recent knowledge, there is no hurry.

How do you reach Opus 5 from Iran

There is no official route. Iran is not on Anthropic's supported-countries list and Iranian cards will not pay. We do not recommend circumvention and we do not sell accounts.

Sources

  1. Anthropic model overview vendor source 12 August 2026
  2. Introducing Claude Opus 5 vendor source 12 August 2026
  3. Anthropic supported countries vendor source 12 August 2026