Claude Opus 5
Claude Opus 5
The default of the summer, now replaced by an Opus that is cheaper and better.
Updated
The read
Opus 5 was the model to reach for by default from July, and it is still strong on serious coding and agent work. Opus 5.5 has now replaced it at a lower price per token with clearly better results on both independent leaderboards, and Anthropic lists Opus 5 as a legacy model. There is no reason to start new work on it, though nothing forces existing work to move yet.
Where it shines
- Frontier-class output on coding and agent work
- Fast enough for interactive use
- Excellent at long-context reading of an existing codebase
Worth knowing first
- Opus 5.5 costs less and scores higher
- Listed by Anthropic as a legacy model
Index score
87.1
Provisional. This score is read from the product's public capability, not from the one-prompt rebuild the fully reviewed entries went through, so treat it as a placing rather than a verdict.
- Rank
- 12 of 73
- Builds
- LLMs
- Category
- Frontier
- Output
- Text, code and tool calls over an API
- Pricing
- Paid only
- Best for
- Existing coding and agent setups already tuned to it
Scores are our own editorial judgement, weighted craft 55, speed 10, control 15 and value 20.
Also worth a look
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- 04GPT-6.1 SolGPT-6.1 SolProvisionalNear-Astra answers at a fifth of the price. The OpenAI model most teams should deploy now.Frontier modelPaid only90.3
