Anthropic's Opus 5 undercuts Fable 5 at half the price

Anthropic just dropped Opus 5, and the headline isn't the benchmarks — it's the bill. The new flagship lands at roughly $5 per million input tokens and $25 output, undercutting Fable 5 (~$10/$50) by about half while trading blows with it on capability.

That's the real move: Anthropic is done treating its most powerful model as a luxury tier. Opus 5 holds the same rates as the outgoing Opus 4.8, so you get a frontier bump with zero price hike — and a direct shot at Fable 5's premium positioning. The comparison making the rounds ($4.20 vs $9.60 on a sample workload) tells the same story in one number: same job, half the cost.

For anyone running agents, RAG, or high-volume pipelines, per-token math dominates the model bill. Halving output cost at the frontier reshapes what's economical to ship.

Why it matters: frontier capability at mid-tier pricing collapses the reason to pay a premium for the biggest models.