Claude Opus

Overview

This is a model family overview. For version-specific details, see the individual model entries linked below.

Claude Opus is the premium tier in Anthropic’s Claude lineup. Where Sonnet balances cost and capability and Haiku optimizes for speed, Opus is the choice when accuracy and depth on hard tasks outweigh cost considerations. This snapshot was rechecked on May 29, 2026.

Current Latest

Claude Opus 4.8 is the current premium reference point. Anthropic announced it on May 28, 2026 as a direct upgrade over Opus 4.7, kept standard API pricing at $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens, and positioned it as stronger for long-horizon agentic coding, complex reasoning, tool use, and professional knowledge work.

Opus 4.8 keeps the 1M-token context window and 128K max output profile on the Claude API, Amazon Bedrock, and Vertex AI, with Microsoft Foundry documented at 200K context. The most practical developer changes are the claude-opus-4-8 API ID, a high default effort level, mid-conversation system messages, a lower 1,024-token prompt-cache minimum, and a much cheaper fast mode than prior Opus fast-mode pricing.

Strengths

• Deep multi-step reasoning with fewer dropped constraints across long prompts
• Strong coding performance for large refactors, architecture changes, and bug isolation
• Reliable long-horizon tool use and agent planning
• Excellent instruction following for structured, policy-constrained outputs
• Multimodal understanding of images, diagrams, and document layouts, now with stronger high-resolution handling in the latest public release

When to Choose Opus

Choose Opus when the task justifies premium pricing:

• Multi-file or multi-repo coding tasks with strict correctness requirements
• Agent workflows that must maintain plan integrity across many tool calls
• Legal, compliance, or research synthesis where nuance and citation quality matter
• Long document review with complex constraints and structured output requirements

For high-volume or lower-complexity work, Sonnet or Haiku may be more cost-effective.

Access

• Anthropic API as claude-opus-4-8
• AWS Bedrock
• Google Vertex AI
• Microsoft Foundry
• Claude consumer and workspace products, with Opus currently positioned for Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise users