--- title: Opus 5 vs. Fable 5: What does half the price buy? description: A hands-on comparison of Claude Opus 5 and Claude Fable 5 across three reasoning-heavy tasks: a bug diagnosis on a live open source issue, an analytics job on... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/opus-5-vs-fable-5-what-does-half-the-price-buy--guqvstmua twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Opus 5 vs. Fable 5: What does half the price buy? | daily.dev og:description: A hands-on comparison of Claude Opus 5 and Claude Fable 5 across three reasoning-heavy tasks: a bug diagnosis on a live open source issue, an analytics job on... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/opus-5-vs-fable-5-what-does-half-the-price-buy--guqvstmua og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/gUQvsTmua.png og:image:alt: Opus 5 vs. Fable 5: What does half the price buy? og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Opus 5 vs. Fable 5: What does half the price buy? **[The New Stack](https://daily.dev/sources/newstack)** · 11 min read · 2 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A hands-on comparison of Claude Opus 5 and Claude Fable 5 across three reasoning-heavy tasks: a bug diagnosis on a live open source issue, an analytics job on a rigged financial spreadsheet with 27 planted errors, and a synthesis memo on conflicting AI marketing claims. Opus 5 consistently caught more discrete facts (26/27 errors vs 24/27, 15/16 conflicting claims vs 12/16) and cost 43% less ($6.67 vs $11.76 total). Fable 5 showed stronger higher-order reasoning — it rebuilt revenue numbers to reveal a shrinking business, explained bug intermittency, and identified a single-source dependency risk in its own recommendation. The conclusion: use Opus 5 for fact-finding tasks, Fable 5 when synthesis and insight matter more than completeness. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How much does Claude Opus 5 cost compared to Claude Fable 5? Claude Opus 5 costs $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens, the same pricing as Opus 4.8. Claude Fable 5 costs $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens, twice as much. In a set of three practical reasoning tests, Opus 5 totaled $6.67 versus $11.76 for Fable 5, a 43% cost difference. _Developers weighing model costs for agentic workloads can track pricing and benchmark comparisons on daily.dev._ ### Is Claude Opus 5 better than Claude Fable 5 for coding and analysis tasks? Opus 5 catches more individual facts and details, finding 26 of 27 planted spreadsheet errors and 15 of 16 marketing claim contradictions, while Fable 5 found 24 and 12 respectively. Fable 5 showed stronger synthesis, rebuilding true revenue trends, explaining a hard-to-reproduce bug's intermittency, and flagging weaknesses in its own recommendation, but missed two simple spreadsheet errors. _Anyone choosing between LLMs for reasoning versus detail work can compare tradeoffs like these on daily.dev._ ### What did Anthropic claim about Claude Opus 5 versus Claude Fable 5 at launch? Anthropic said Opus 5 comes close to the frontier intelligence of Fable 5 at half the price, while also stating directly that Opus 5 is not more capable overall than Fable 5, its most capable general-access model. Anthropic's own benchmarks showed Opus 5 winning eight comparisons, and Opus 5 became the default model on Claude Max. _Developers tracking model launches and default-tier changes can follow Anthropic's model lineup on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Claude Opus 5.5 vs. Fable 5.1: One overthinks, the other cuts corners](https://daily.dev/posts/claude-opus-5-5-vs-fable-5-1-one-overthinks-the-other-cuts-corners-3o7fx76eo) · The New Stack · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Is Claude Fable 5.1 Actually Cheaper Than Fable 5? I Ran the Numbers Myself](https://daily.dev/posts/is-claude-fable-5-1-actually-cheaper-than-fable-5-i-ran-the-numbers-myself-mmsrbb6gd) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ai](https://daily.dev/tags/ai), [#llm](https://daily.dev/tags/llm), [#claude](https://daily.dev/tags/claude), [#anthropic](https://daily.dev/tags/anthropic) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/opus-5-vs-fable-5-what-does-half-the-price-buy--guqvstmua) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Opus 5 vs. Fable 5: What does half the price buy?","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/opus-5-vs-fable-5-what-does-half-the-price-buy--guqvstmua","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/opus-5-vs-fable-5-what-does-half-the-price-buy--guqvstmua"},"datePublished":"2026-07-29T18:29:05.423Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T08:59:28.254Z","description":"A hands-on comparison of Claude Opus 5 and Claude Fable 5 across three reasoning-heavy tasks: a bug diagnosis on a live open source issue, an analytics job on...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/7c0160e6411a91f5c15876a46e94015a?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/7c0160e6411a91f5c15876a46e94015a?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"The New Stack","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"The New Stack","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/newstack","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/newstack"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/opus-5-vs-fable-5-what-does-half-the-price-buy--guqvstmua","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":2},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"ai,llm,claude,anthropic","timeRequired":"PT11M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The New Stack","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/newstack"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Opus 5 vs. Fable 5: What does half the price buy?"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/opus-5-vs-fable-5-what-does-half-the-price-buy--guqvstmua#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"How much does Claude Opus 5 cost compared to Claude Fable 5?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Claude Opus 5 costs $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens, the same pricing as Opus 4.8. Claude Fable 5 costs $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens, twice as much. In a set of three practical reasoning tests, Opus 5 totaled $6.67 versus $11.76 for Fable 5, a 43% cost difference. Developers weighing model costs for agentic workloads can track pricing and benchmark comparisons on daily.dev."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Is Claude Opus 5 better than Claude Fable 5 for coding and analysis tasks?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Opus 5 catches more individual facts and details, finding 26 of 27 planted spreadsheet errors and 15 of 16 marketing claim contradictions, while Fable 5 found 24 and 12 respectively. Fable 5 showed stronger synthesis, rebuilding true revenue trends, explaining a hard-to-reproduce bug's intermittency, and flagging weaknesses in its own recommendation, but missed two simple spreadsheet errors. Anyone choosing between LLMs for reasoning versus detail work can compare tradeoffs like these on daily.dev."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What did Anthropic claim about Claude Opus 5 versus Claude Fable 5 at launch?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Anthropic said Opus 5 comes close to the frontier intelligence of Fable 5 at half the price, while also stating directly that Opus 5 is not more capable overall than Fable 5, its most capable general-access model. Anthropic's own benchmarks showed Opus 5 winning eight comparisons, and Opus 5 became the default model on Claude Max. Developers tracking model launches and default-tier changes can follow Anthropic's model lineup on daily.dev."}}]} ```