Claude (Anthropic)

A Tier · 8.5/10

**Plans changed around Oct 30: Max 20x is now called Ultra ($200, 10x Pro usage a week with no five-hour limit for verified accounts, $200 of monthly API credits), and the $100 Max plan now includes Fable up to half its weekly limit plus $100 of API credits. Nov 5: Personal Finance entered beta in the US on Pro, Max and Ultra -- read-only bank and card connections through Plaid.** **Nov 2: message threads entered public beta on the Claude Platform, Claude Platform on AWS, Microsoft Foundry and Google Cloud, so agents send only the new turn and the previous response ID instead of the whole history, cutting median time to first token by about 35% on 500K-1M-token requests at standard token rates. Nov 4: Claude Marketplace passed 25 partner agents and products that eligible enterprises can buy against committed Anthropic spend.** **Claude Duet opened as a research preview on 2026-10-21: a proactive agent app on iOS, Android and claude.ai, built around Claude Opus 5.5, that sends a morning brief from your connected apps, keeps working on a cloud computer while you are away and asks before it sends, pays or deletes anything. It is included in Pro and Max in the US with a waitlist, on the same usage limits as the rest of Claude.** **Oct 23: chat and Cowork became one Claude for Enterprise (GA). Oct 22: the full Claude Platform went GA on Google Cloud as an Anthropic-managed offering billed through Google Cloud. Oct 26: Anthropic filed an S-1 for an IPO on Nasdaq under ANT.** **Claude Haiku 5.5 shipped on 2026-10-07 at $0.10 / $0.50 per 1M tokens for prompts up to 100K ($0.50 / $2.50 above) -- 90% below Haiku 4.5 on most requests -- with adjustable effort for the first time on a Haiku, and the same day Anthropic halved Sonnet 5.5 cache reads to $0.10 and added monthly API credits for Max ($100 or $200) and Team (up to $500 pooled).** **Anthropic expanded the Cyber Verification Program on 2026-10-06 into three access tiers (Defense, Red Team, Specialized) that unlock reduced cyber safeguards on Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5.5, Mythos 5.1 and future models for verified security teams -- closing the 'coming weeks' note Opus 5.5 shipped with; generally available Claude keeps its conservative cyber blocks.** **Two Claude 5.5 models in six days: Claude Opus 5.5 (2026-09-22) and Claude Sonnet 5.5 (2026-09-28).** Opus 5.5 performs at Fable 5.1 level on most work and costs 40% less than Opus 5 to run -- $4/$20 per 1M (down from $5/$25) with cache reads cut to $0.20 (from $0.50), fast mode at $8/$40 up to 2.5x speed, output 30%+ faster, and five-hour usage limits raised on Pro, Max, Team and seat-based Enterprise with a saveable rate-limit reset. Sonnet 5.5 keeps Sonnet 5's $2/$10 but needs far fewer tokens (up to 30% cheaper per task), runs 30%+ faster and jumps Terminal-Bench 4.0 from 10.3% to 70.6%. Both are 1M context, Jun 2026 cutoff, on the Claude Platform, Bedrock, Vertex and Foundry; Haiku 5.5 followed on 2026-10-07. Opus 5.5 launches with Fable-class cyber and bio safeguards (most cyber tasks fall back to Opus 4.8) and cannot run with thinking off.

Last updated: 2026-11-05Free tier available

Score Breakdown

9.0

Ease of Use

9.0

Output Quality

8.0

Value

8.0

Features

Benchmark Scores

Benchmarks for Claude Opus 5.5 (launched 2026-09-22) -- Anthropic's own table, adaptive thinking at max effort unless noted; safeguard fallbacks to Opus 4.8 (cyber) and Opus 5 (bio) were active, which Anthropic says likely lowers these scores. Third-party verification pending; Sonnet 5.5 (2026-09-28) posts 70.6% Terminal-Bench 4.0 / 55.5% CursorBench / 1844 GDPval-AA on the same table

Chatbot Arena ELOHuman preference rating1510

Benchmark	Description	Score
Terminal-Bench 4.0 (xhigh effort)		66.4%
FrontierCode v1.1 Main		54.4%
CursorBench 4.0		57.8%
OSWorld 2.1 (partial)		81.8%
Humanity's Last Exam (with tools)		67.7%
Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1		58.7%
Chartography (with tools)		89%
GDPval-AA v2.1 (Artificial Analysis)		1846Elo

Last updated: 2026-09-28

Visit Claude (Anthropic)

Personality & Tone

The thoughtful consultant

Tone: Measured, careful, and slightly formal. Claude explains tradeoffs rather than handing back one-liner answers, asks clarifying questions when a request is ambiguous, and hedges openly when it is not confident.

Quirks: More willing than most models to refuse edgy or ambiguous requests, pushes back on premises it disagrees with, and will flag when you are probably asking the wrong question instead of just answering the one you typed.

The Good and the Bad

What we like

+Claude Haiku 5.5 (2026-10-07) makes the small Claude genuinely cheap: $0.10 / $0.50 per 1M for prompts under 100K, with Anthropic's own table showing it ahead of GPT-6 Luna on GDPval-AA (1620 vs 1437), OSWorld 2.1 offline (72.4% vs 48.9%) and Terminal-Bench 4.0 (39.2% vs 16.4%). Vendor-published numbers, third-party verification pending
+Opus 5.5 (2026-09-22) is the new price-performance anchor at the top of the range: Fable 5.1-level results on most work at $4/$20 with $0.20 cache reads, 40% cheaper than Opus 5 on typical workloads, 30%+ faster output, and vendor-table leads on Terminal-Bench 4.0 (66.4%), FrontierCode (54.4%), CursorBench 4.0 (57.8%) and GDPval-AA (1846)
+Sonnet 5.5 (2026-09-28) turns the $2/$10 tier into a real coding model -- Terminal-Bench 4.0 70.6% vs Sonnet 5's 10.3%, CursorBench 55.5% within two points of Opus 5.5, up to 30% cheaper per task through token efficiency and 30%+ faster
+Best writing quality of any LLM -- and Opus 5.5 (2026-09-22) writes more naturally still: Anthropic says it puts the key point first and testers called it clearer than Opus 5, which directly addresses the most common complaint about the previous generation
+1M token context window for enterprise API means it can process entire codebases, huge document sets, or long agent traces without chunking
+Opus 4.8 is built for agentic work -- Anthropic says it is a more effective collaborator with notably improved judgment in agent scenarios and is roughly 4x less likely than 4.7 to let code flaws slip through
+New user-facing effort control (claude.ai + Cowork) lets you trade depth for speed, and fast mode now runs at 2.5x speed while costing 3x less than the previous fast mode -- a real latency/cost lever short of full reasoning
+High-res vision (3.75MP images, 2,576px long edge) means charts, diagrams, whiteboards, and dense UIs work properly

What could be better

−Haiku 5.5's low price has a cliff: any request whose prompt runs over 100,000 tokens (cache reads and writes count toward that) bills the whole request at five times the rate, $0.50 / $2.50 -- long-context and agent loops that grow past 100K lose most of the saving
−Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5.5 both ship gated: Opus 5.5 carries Fable-class cyber and bio safeguards that transparently re-route most cybersecurity tasks to Opus 4.8 (verification programs are the way through), thinking can no longer be switched off on Opus 5.5, and Sonnet users who ran thinking off must migrate to the new `between_tools` setting
−Anthropic itself says benchmark margins have become a less reliable guide and that the Opus 5.5 vs Fable 5.1 gap 'is narrower than these scores suggest' -- and the Opus 5.5 scores were measured with safeguard fallbacks to older models, so treat the table as directional
−Free tier is more limited than ChatGPT's -- you hit the cap faster
−No image generation built in (unlike ChatGPT with DALL-E)
−Fewer third-party integrations and plugins compared to OpenAI's ecosystem
−Can be overly cautious and refuse requests that are perfectly fine

Pricing

Free

✓Limited messages/day
✓Claude Sonnet 5 (default as of 2026-06-30); Sonnet 5.5 shipped 2026-09-28 at the same API price
✓Basic features

Pro

$20/month

✓5x more usage than Free
✓Claude Duet research preview (2026-10-21, US, waitlist): proactive agent app on iOS, Android and claude.ai, same usage limits
✓Claude Opus 5.5 (2026-09-22) -- the new leading Claude model, Fable 5.1-level on most work; Opus 5 remains
✓Sonnet 5 / Sonnet 5.5 (2026-09-28) for everyday work
✓Five-hour usage limits raised 2026-09-22 plus a saveable rate-limit reset
✓Effort control + extended thinking
✓Priority access

Max

$100/month

✓5x Pro usage every 5 hours and every week
✓Fable included, up to half your weekly limit (new, late October 2026)
✓$100 a month in Claude Platform API credits (claim by linking a Console organization)
✓Priority access at high traffic times
✓Claude Duet research preview (US, waitlist)
✓Monthly billing only

Ultra (formerly Max 20x)

$200/month

✓10x Pro usage every week
✓No 5-hour limit for verified accounts
✓Fable included, up to half your weekly limit
✓$200 a month in Claude Platform API credits
✓Max 20x subscribers moved to Ultra automatically at the same price (about 2026-10-30)
✓Monthly billing only

API (Opus 5.5, launched 2026-09-22)

$4 / $20/per 1M tokens (input/output) -- 20% below Opus 5; cache reads $0.20 (60% below Opus 5), cache writes $5

✓Fable 5.1-level on most work per Anthropic; 40% cheaper than Opus 5 on typical workloads at default settings
✓Fast mode $8 / $40 per 1M for up to 2.5x speed (Claude Code + first-party API only)
✓1M context, Jun 2026 cutoff, Batch $2 / $10; `claude-opus-5-5` on Bedrock, Vertex AI and Microsoft Foundry day one
✓Ships with Fable-class cyber/bio safeguards (cyber tasks fall back to Opus 4.8) and thinking cannot be turned off

API (Sonnet 5.5, launched 2026-09-28)

$2 / $10/per 1M tokens (input/output) -- unchanged from Sonnet 5; cache reads $0.10 since 2026-10-07 (was $0.20), cache writes $2.50

✓Up to 30% cheaper per task than Sonnet 5 through fewer tokens, output 30%+ faster
✓Terminal-Bench 4.0 70.6% (Sonnet 5: 10.3%); CursorBench 4.0 55.5%; GDPval-AA 1844 vs Opus 5.5's 1846 (vendor numbers)
✓1M context, Jun 2026 cutoff, Batch $1 / $5; `claude-sonnet-5-5` on all platforms
✓First Sonnet with cyber safeguards and reasoning-extraction classifiers; thinking-off users must adopt `between_tools`

API (Haiku 5.5, launched 2026-10-07)

$0.10 / $0.50/per 1M tokens (input/output) for prompts up to 100K; $0.50 / $2.50 above 100K

✓Cache reads $0.01 / $0.05, 5-minute cache writes $0.125 / $0.625, 1-hour writes $0.20 / $1; Batch $0.05 / $0.25 (up to 100K)
✓Haiku 4.5 was $1 / $5 -- Anthropic says about 75% cheaper per task on average after Haiku 5.5's larger tokenizer
✓First Haiku with an adjustable effort setting; Anthropic's fastest model at standard speed
✓`claude-haiku-5-5` on the Claude Platform, Bedrock, Vertex AI and Microsoft Foundry on day one

API (Opus 5)

$5 / $25/per 1M tokens (input/output)

✓Launched 2026-07-24 as `claude-opus-5`; same rate as Opus 4.8, half of Fable 5's $10/$50
✓Default model on Claude Max, strongest model on Claude Pro; also on Claude Code and Claude Cowork
✓Anthropic's stated positioning: within 0.5% of Fable 5's peak CursorBench 3.2 score at half the cost per task
✓Available via the Claude API, Google Cloud, and Bedrock (anthropic.claude-opus-5)

API (Opus 4.8)

$5 / $25/per 1M tokens (input/output)

✓Unchanged from Opus 4.7 pricing
✓1M context window
✓Fast mode at $10 / $50 per 1M (research preview) -- DEPRECATED 2026-10-30 and removed 2026-11-30, after which fast requests to claude-opus-4-8 return an error instead of falling back; Opus 5.5 fast mode is $8 / $40
✓Tool use, MCP, high-res vision; Bedrock, Vertex AI, Foundry

API (Sonnet 5)

$2 / $10/per 1M tokens (input/output) -- NOW THE STANDARD PRICE; the scheduled 2026-09-01 rise to $3 / $15 was cancelled

✓Launched 2026-06-30 as the 'most agentic Sonnet yet' -- approaches Opus 4.8 quality at lower cost
✓Default model on Free + Pro; also on Max/Team/Enterprise, Claude Code, and the API (claude-sonnet-5)
✓Updated tokenizer (input maps to ~1.0-1.35x more tokens depending on content type)
✓OSWorld-Verified 78.5%; scored 0.0% on cyber-exploit-development evals (safety)

API (Fable 5)

$10 / $50/per 1M tokens (input/output)

✓First publicly available Mythos-class model (launched 2026-06-09; suspended 6/12 by US-gov order; RESTORED globally 2026-07-01 after controls lifted 6/30)
✓PERMANENT plan split from 2026-07-20 (announced 7/18): Max + Team Premium keep Fable 5 included at 50% of usage limits; Pro + Team Standard move to pay-as-you-go credits with a one-time $100 grant
✓API rate $10/$50 per 1M; tiered credit bundles discount up to 30%
✓Auto-fallback on cyber/bio/chem-flagged requests; **as of 2026-08-07 the biology classifier was retuned and biology fallbacks dropped ~85%**, and the stated fallback target is now **Opus 5** (dual-use virology/toxicology/molecular design still fall back); mandatory 30-day retention on Mythos-class traffic (not used for training)

Known Issues

MAX 20X IS NOW THE ULTRA PLAN, AND MAX GAINS FABLE AND $100 OF MONTHLY API CREDITS (changed on or about 2026-10-30, vendor-primary; recorded late -- claude.com still said 'Max 20x' on 2026-10-29 and said 'Ultra' by 2026-11-02, and the Help Center article was last modified 2026-10-30): Anthropic's Help Center: 'The Max 20x plan is now called the Ultra plan. Existing Max 20x subscribers move to Ultra automatically, with no price change.' **The ladder on claude.com/pricing (checked 2026-11-05):** Pro $20; **Max $100** -- '5x Pro usage every 5 hours and every week', 'Fable included, up to half your weekly limit' and '$100 a month in API credits to build on the Claude Platform', both marked New; **Ultra $200** -- 'No 5-hour limit' for verified accounts, '10x Pro usage every week' and '$200 a month in API credits, up from $100 on Max'. Both Max and Ultra are monthly-only. Note the unit change: Max 20x was sold as 20x Pro usage per five-hour session, while Ultra is stated as 10x Pro usage per week with the five-hour window removed, so the two are not directly comparable -- heavy users should watch their weekly meter rather than assume a straight upgrade. Pro users can reach Fable only through usage credits. The monthly API credits are claimed by linking a Claude Console organization in Settings > Billing.Source: Anthropic (claude.com/pricing; support.claude.com/en/articles/17728952-what-is-the-ultra-plan, dateModified 2026-10-30; support.claude.com/en/articles/11049741-what-is-the-max-plan) -- fetched 2026-11-05 · 2026-10-30
PERSONAL FINANCE IN CLAUDE (BETA, US, PRO / MAX / ULTRA) (2026-11-05, vendor-primary): 'With Personal Finance in Claude, you can securely connect your bank and card accounts and ask in your own words. Access is read-only, and Personal Finance can't move, manage, or invest your money.' It 'starts rolling out in beta this week, on the Pro, Max, and Ultra plans in the US'. Accounts connect through Plaid, so Claude never sees your bank password; for connected accounts Claude sees the bank and account names, type, last four digits, balances, credit limits and 'up to two years of transactions'. Conversations in the Personal Finance hub 'aren't used to train our models'. Anthropic is explicit that it 'isn't designed to give investment advice' and that 'Claude can make mistakes in its answers', so check important figures with your bank. ChatGPT's comparable Finances area is covered on the ChatGPT page.Source: Anthropic (claude.com/resources/articles/introducing-personal-finance-in-claude, JSON-LD datePublished 2026-11-05) -- fetched 2026-11-05 · 2026-11-05
CLAUDE ENTERPRISE SECURITY CENTER, INFERENCE HOOKS GA, A PARENT-ORGANIZATION ADMIN CONSOLE AND MEMBER SIGN-OUT (2026-11-05, vendor-primary): **(1) Security center (beta):** one page in Organization settings that compares chat, Cowork and Claude Code settings against Anthropic's recommended configuration, flags new or changed settings, supports team attestations and exports a report for auditors -- Anthropic notes it is 'guidance based on Anthropic's recommendations, not a certification or a guarantee of compliance'. **(2) Inference hooks (generally available):** prompt hooks and pre-tool-call hooks send prompts and tool calls from supported Claude products to your DLP or security vendor for a check before they run. **(3) Centralized management (beta):** a parent-organization console at admin.claude.com for SSO, SCIM, domain verification, groups and Compliance API keys across every Claude Enterprise and Claude Platform organization, with multiple identity providers allowed. Setup cannot be undone, so pick parent admins first. **(4) Access controls (beta):** sign a member out of every browser and device with one Admin API call (API keys, running cloud sessions and scheduled routines are not ended), a self-serve IP allowlist, admin-set Claude Desktop settings, and blocking personal or outside Claude accounts in Claude Desktop on managed computers. **(5) EDR in Cowork:** admins can run their EDR sensor inside the local Cowork virtual machine, in detection mode only, on macOS and Windows; cloud Cowork sessions are not covered. All of it is Claude Enterprise only.Source: Anthropic (claude.com/resources/articles/claude-enterprise-security-updates, JSON-LD datePublished 2026-11-05) -- fetched 2026-11-05 · 2026-11-05
MESSAGE THREADS (PUBLIC BETA) AND MORE CLAUDE MARKETPLACE PARTNERS (2026-11-02 and 2026-11-04, vendor-primary): **(1) Message threads (11/02):** 'agents no longer need to resend the full conversation history on every turn'. Add the thread parameter to Messages API requests; the first request carries the full conversation, later ones carry only new messages plus the previous response ID. Anthropic holds each thread 'in memory, where it's encrypted and not written to disk', and a thread 'expires 5 minutes after its last request'. **It cuts latency, not cost:** 'Claude still reads the full conversation on every turn, so token usage stays the same', and 'standard Claude token rates and existing rate limits apply'. With threads on by default for most Claude Code users, 'requests with 500k to 1M tokens see median TTFT drop by about 35%'. Available on the native Claude Platform, Claude Platform on AWS, Claude in Microsoft Foundry and Claude Models on Google Cloud (Anthropic managed). **(2) Claude Marketplace (11/04):** 'over 25 partner agents and products', with new additions in security (Chainguard, Checkmarx, Cyera, Rubrik, Tanium), developer infrastructure (Datadog, Netlify), and tools such as AirOps, Runway and Webflow; 'eligible enterprise customers can apply a portion of their committed Anthropic spend toward these solutions'.Source: Anthropic (claude.com/resources/articles/message-threads, JSON-LD 2026-11-02; claude.com/resources/articles/new-agents-and-products-claude-marketplace, JSON-LD 2026-11-04) -- fetched 2026-11-05 · 2026-11-04
FAST MODE ON OPUS 4.8 IS DEPRECATED -- REMOVAL 2026-11-30 (vendor-primary): Anthropic's fast-mode doc: 'Fast mode on Claude Opus 4.8 is deprecated and will be removed on November 30, 2026. After removal, requests to claude-opus-4-8 with speed: fast will return an error. To continue using fast mode, migrate to Claude Opus 5.5.' Claude Code 2.1.316 (2026-10-31) dates the deprecation to October 30 and adds that removed requests 'do not fall back to standard Opus 4.8'. Fast mode stays available (not a preview) on Opus 5.5 ($8 / $40 per 1M) and in research preview on Opus 5 ($10 / $50). Opus 4.8 itself is unaffected: the deprecations table still lists claude-opus-4-8 as Active, retiring 'not sooner than May 28, 2027'. **Practical read:** any integration that sends speed: fast to Opus 4.8 must move to Opus 5.5 within the month or start getting errors.Source: Anthropic (platform.claude.com/docs/en/build-with-claude/fast-mode.md; platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/model-deprecations.md; Claude Code CHANGELOG 2.1.316), fetched 2026-11-02 · 2026-10-30
CLAUDE DUET RESEARCH PREVIEW, CHAT AND COWORK UNIFIED FOR ENTERPRISE, CLAUDE PLATFORM ON GOOGLE CLOUD (2026-10-21 to 2026-10-23, vendor-primary): **(1) Claude Duet (10/21):** 'Today, we're opening a research preview of Claude Duet, a new app where Claude works as a proactive agent.' Standalone app on iOS and Android plus claude.ai; 'included in Pro and Max plans and uses the same usage limits as the rest of Claude'; join a waitlist; the product page says US only and 'Powered by Opus 5.5'. It sends a morning brief across connected apps, messages you when something needs attention, and takes tasks from scheduling to dashboards, forecasts and prototype web apps, running on a cloud computer after you close the app. Safeguards Anthropic lists: it never directly sees passwords, cookies or sign-in tokens (Managed Agents credential design); actions pass the auto mode classifier from Claude Code; sending sensitive messages, paying or deleting requires your approval with the action, destination and every recipient shown; a new classifier blocks sharing the strictest data tier (card numbers, government IDs) and lets health or finance details through only on explicit instruction; external penetration testing and bug bounty coverage. A follow-up safety, privacy and security post came on 10/23. **(2) Unified Claude for Enterprise (10/23):** 'Chat and Cowork first came together for Pro and Max plans in September. The same unified Claude experience is now generally available for Claude Enterprise plans'; agentic work runs in an Anthropic-managed cloud environment, admins control access by role, and a new Efficient mode manages usage. **(3) Claude Models on Google Cloud, Anthropic managed (10/22, GA):** the full Claude Platform feature set (Managed Agents beta, code execution, computer use and same-day betas) with Google Cloud IAM, one Google Cloud invoice and draw-down of Google Cloud commitments; US and Global endpoints. The Google-managed offering, where Google is the data processor, continues.Source: Claude: Introducing Claude Duet (claude.com/resources/articles/claude-duet, JSON-LD 2026-10-21) + claude.com/product/claude-duet + Claude Duet Safety, Privacy, and Security (2026-10-23) + Claude Cowork and chat come together for Enterprise (claude.com/resources/articles/unified-claude-enterprise, 2026-10-23) + Claude Platform is now available on Google Cloud (claude.com/resources/articles/claude-models-on-google-cloud-anthropic-managed, 2026-10-22), all fetched 2026-10-29 · 2026-10-23
ANTHROPIC FILES FOR AN IPO, 40% OFF FOR US GOVERNMENT BUYERS, AGENT SKILLS GOES TO THE LINUX FOUNDATION (2026-10-22 to 2026-10-27, vendor-primary): **(1) S-1 (10/26):** 'Anthropic, PBC filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission relating to its proposed initial public offering of its Class A common stock', to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under 'ANT'; share count and price range not yet set. No change to plans or prices. **(2) GSA (10/27):** a new agreement gives 'government partners a 40% discount on Claude Enterprise, Claude for Government, and the Claude API', now across every product surface including direct purchases (cloud marketplaces 'in the coming months') and extended to state, local, tribal and territorial governments, with no minimum spend. **(3) Agent Skills (10/22):** Anthropic donated the Agent Skills standard (SKILL.md folders) to the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation, where MCP already lives; Anthropic cites more than 70 integrating platforms including ChatGPT, Cursor, GitHub Copilot and VS Code, 1 million published skills and nearly 280 million installs.Source: Anthropic: Anthropic files S-1 with the SEC for proposed initial public offering (anthropic.com/news/s1-sec, index date Oct 26, 2026) + Expanding our partnership with GSA (anthropic.com/news/expanding-partnership-gsa, Oct 27, 2026) + Donating Agent Skills to the Agentic AI Foundation (anthropic.com/news/donating-agent-skills-to-the-agentic-ai-foundation, Oct 22, 2026), fetched 2026-10-29 · 2026-10-26
CLAUDE HAIKU 5.5 -- $0.10 / $0.50 BELOW 100K TOKENS, ADJUSTABLE EFFORT, AND A SONNET 5.5 CACHE-READ CUT THE SAME DAY (2026-10-07, vendor-primary): Anthropic released **Claude Haiku 5.5**, 'the cheapest, fastest, and most capable small model we've ever released', aimed at high-volume work (summaries, compaction, database queries, classification), subagents under Opus 5.5 / Sonnet 5.5, and latency-bound jobs like live support and browser use. **Pricing (launch post and platform.claude.com pricing doc, per 1M tokens): prompts up to 100K -- $0.10 input, $0.50 output, $0.01 cache reads, $0.125 5-minute cache writes ($0.20 1-hour); prompts over 100K -- $0.50 / $2.50 / $0.05 / $0.625 ($1 1-hour); Batch $0.05 / $0.25 and $0.25 / $1.25.** Haiku 4.5 was $1 / $5. The tier is decided per request on the whole prompt including cached tokens, and Haiku 5.5 is the one current model that does not get the full 1M window at standard price. Anthropic's footnote: 90% cheaper than Haiku 4.5 below 100K, 50% above, and about 75% cheaper per task on average once its larger tokenizer is counted (around 90% of Haiku 4.5 requests were under 100K). **First Haiku with an adjustable effort setting. Vendor benchmarks (Haiku 5.5 / Haiku 4.5 / GPT-6 Luna / Sonnet 5.5):** GDPval-AA v2.1 1620 / 735 / 1437 / 1840; AA-Briefcase v1.1 1578 / 614 / 1336 / 1824; OSWorld 2.1 offline subset 72.4% / 15.7% / 48.9% / 83.9%; Humanity's Last Exam 45.9% no tools, 57.4% with tools (Sonnet 5.5 56.9% / 64.5%); Terminal-Bench 4.0 39.2% / 0.0% / 16.4% / 70.6%; FrontierCode 1.1 Main 46.4% / n-a / 42.4% / 52.1%; Chartography 46.4% / 6.4% / 29.1% / 61.6%. Anthropic itself says Sonnet 5.5 and Opus 5.5 'remain better choices for complex agentic coding'. **Safeguards:** cyber stricter than Haiku 4.5 but looser than other recent models (wider defensive use than Sonnet 5.5, pentesting still blocked); biology the same as Sonnet 5 / 5.5 / Opus 5. **Availability:** all platforms day one -- Claude Platform (`claude-haiku-5-5`), AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure. **Same-day changes:** (1) **Sonnet 5.5 cache reads cut 50% to $0.10 per 1M** (pricing doc: cache hits on Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5.5 are 0.05x base input), which Anthropic says makes Sonnet 5.5 about 20% cheaper on most agentic work; (2) **a monthly API credit for subscribers rolling out 'this week': Max 5x $100, Max 20x $200 (Max 20x is now the Ultra plan, see the 2026-10-30 entry), Team up to $500 pooled**, usable on any model on the Claude Platform; (3) the Python and TypeScript SDKs gain **computer use and browser use in beta**. Customer quotes (vendor-relayed): HubSpot 92.8% on its CRM suite, AlphaSense 0.84 vs 0.76 for Haiku 4.5, Box +11 points at about half the latency, Cognition's Devin Fusion holding FrontierCode 66.2 with Haiku 5.5 as sidekick. Same day it reached GitHub Copilot (see github-copilot page).Source: Anthropic (anthropic.com/claude-haiku-5-5 -- root-path launch page, on-page 'October 7, 2026'); platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing.md (Haiku 5.5 rows, long-context rule, Sonnet 5.5 cache read $0.10, Batch rows); platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/models/overview.md (claude-haiku-5-5 IDs on Bedrock, Vertex, Foundry) -- all fetched 2026-10-12 via curl with browser UA · 2026-10-07
2026 USAGE POLICY UPDATE -- TAKES EFFECT NOVEMBER 12, 2026 (published 2026-10-08, vendor-primary): Anthropic published its annual Usage Policy revision. Most changes clarify existing rules, but several matter to builders: **(1) a new section, 'Do Not Engage in Deceptive Campaigns or Artificial Activity'**, consolidates rules on fake accounts, fabricated news sites and influence-operation tooling, political or commercial. **(2) The elections section is renamed 'Do Not Undermine Democratic Processes'** and narrowed to deceiving voters or disrupting elections -- and **the blanket ban on personalized vote and campaign targeting is removed** (Anthropic cites nonprofits writing voter information in other languages and ballot-cure notices). **(3) Weapons:** explicitly covers guidance and control software and components, and arming drones or other autonomous vehicles. **(4) Surveillance and criminal justice rewritten:** tracking people without consent is prohibited whether real-time or from previously collected data; Claude cannot decide or recommend who to investigate, arrest or charge; building surveillance tools is prohibited; consented tracking (fraud monitoring), moderation, journalism and legal research stay permitted. **(5) High-risk use cases** (health, legal rights, finances, livelihood, essential services) keep the human-in-the-loop and AI-disclosure requirements, now with an explicit list of what is covered, plus **new requirements when Claude drives hardware that takes autonomous physical actions**: an operator who can observe and stop it, and a safe state if Claude disconnects. **(6) A prohibition on 'sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior toward our models'**, scoped to extreme cases and enforced mainly by Claude ending such conversations. **(7) Supported Regions** enforcement clarified to cover people physically in unsupported regions and entities incorporated, headquartered, or majority-owned or controlled there.Source: Anthropic (anthropic.com/news/2026-usage-policy-update, on-page 'Oct 8, 2026'; 'The updated policy takes effect on November 12') -- fetched 2026-10-12 via curl with browser UA · 2026-10-08
ANTHROPIC CYBER MISSION -- A CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE DEFENSE PROGRAM AND A FREE OSS SCANNER (2026-10-08, vendor-primary): two days after folding Project Glasswing into the expanded Cyber Verification Program, Anthropic launched the **Anthropic Cyber Mission**, 'a long-term commitment to securing the systems everyone depends on'. **(1) Critical Infrastructure Defense Program (CIDP)** brings 'frontier Claude models, on-site engineers, and our threat research' to the trusted providers that secure operational technology (power grids, water, transport, government systems). Founding partners: **Accenture, Booz Allen, CrowdStrike, Deloitte, Dragos, Hitachi, Insane Cyber, Nozomi Networks, Palo Alto Networks, PwC and Rockwell Automation**; vendors and integrators can register interest. Anthropic adds that its June cyber-defense programme for state, local, tribal and territorial governments now reaches 'more than half of all US states'. **(2) OSS Scanner** -- an opt-in service 'inspired by Google's OSS-Fuzz': enrolled open-source projects get periodic scans from Anthropic's most capable models, **free of charge**, each report with a proof of concept, explanation and suggested fix. **Reports are model-generated and sent without human review**; Anthropic 'expects a true-positive rate above 90%' and warns some will carry errors such as a wrong severity. Funding went to the Python Software Foundation, Alpha-Omega and OpenSSF (Linux Foundation) and the Apache Software Foundation; the Defender Advantage Fund launched in August keeps the scanner free. Maintainers can also apply to Claude for Open Source for free Max subscriptions. This closes the 'open-source / critical-infrastructure write-up in the coming weeks' item from the 10/06 Cyber Verification Program post. No pricing or new model access beyond the CVP tiers is stated.Source: Anthropic (anthropic.com/news/anthropic-cyber-mission, on-page 'Oct 8, 2026') -- fetched 2026-10-12 via curl with browser UA · 2026-10-08
CYBER VERIFICATION PROGRAM EXPANDED TO THREE ACCESS TIERS -- REDUCED CYBER SAFEGUARDS FOR VERIFIED DEFENDERS, AND IT ABSORBS PROJECT GLASSWING (2026-10-06, vendor-primary): Anthropic launched 'a new, expanded version of our Cyber Verification Program (CVP), which makes advanced cyber capabilities and reduced blocking classifiers available to qualifying security professionals'. **Every tier includes 'Claude Opus 5.5, Claude Sonnet 5.5, Claude Mythos 5.1, and new models moving forward'.** The three tiers: **Defense Access** -- SOC and incident-response work, malware reverse-engineering, analysing and validating vulnerabilities; open to company, nonprofit, university and government security teams defending systems they own, critical-infrastructure operators 'of any size, such as regional hospitals or municipal utilities', smaller security firms, open-source maintainers and 'individual researchers with a track record of reported vulnerabilities'; Anthropic expects 'many organizations' to qualify and aims to answer 'within a few days'. **Red Team Access** -- adds authorized penetration testing and red-teaming (in-house, government and pentest-firm red teams), only against systems they are authorized to test; 'real-time blocks on actions that could cause physical harm or mass disruption' remain; review takes 'a few weeks', applicants are enrolled in Defense Access while they wait, and **individual researchers are not eligible**. **Specialized Access** -- 'the fewest cyber blocks', reserved for a limited set of verified organizations authorized to test safety systems such as flight operating systems, power grids, telecom networks, interbank transfer infrastructure and government networks, reviewed 'in collaboration with the US government'; **existing Project Glasswing members move into this tier without reapproval for current models**. **What generally available Claude still does:** 'code review, patching known issues, vulnerability finding in owned source code, and triage of security alerts' -- the conservative cyber safeguards on Opus 5.5, Fable 5.1 and Sonnet 5.5 are unchanged. **Data terms:** data retention is required for CVP members so Anthropic can monitor for misuse; once **Enterprise Frontier Safeguards (EFS)** ships 'later this fall', eligible organizations can keep data in cloud infrastructure they control, and until then organizations that already have zero-data-retention access to Fable 5.1 or Mythos 5.1 can use CVP with ZDR. **Anthropic's own efficacy test (CyScenarioBench, Opus 5.5, 10 challenges x 5 attempts):** without CVP every task was blocked on the first prompt; Defense Access blocked 46 of 50 trials; Red Team Access blocked none and completed 34 of 50 -- 'effectively equivalent to the model's 67.6% success rate on this evaluation with no safeguards applied'. **Glasswing results disclosed for the first time:** partners 'uncovered at least 129,000 verified software vulnerabilities between April and July 2026', Anthropic's own open-source scanning found 'an additional 5,500' between April and October, and 'more than 33,000 have so far been rated as critical- or high-severity' -- described as a lower bound from 33 partner reports. **What this closes on this page:** the Opus 5.5 launch (9/22) said the CVP would expand 'in the coming weeks' with three trusted-access tiers up to Mythos; that is now live. **Watch: EFS availability 'later this fall'; the open-source and critical-infrastructure write-up Anthropic promised 'in the coming weeks'.**Source: Anthropic (anthropic.com/news/cyber-verification-program, on-page 'Oct 6, 2026', title 'Expanding the Cyber Verification Program') -- fetched 2026-10-06 via curl with browser UA · 2026-10-06
CLAUDE SONNET 5.5 -- SAME $2/$10 AS SONNET 5, FEWER TOKENS PER TASK, 30%+ FASTER, AND TERMINAL-BENCH 4.0 GOES FROM 10.3% TO 70.6% (2026-09-28, vendor-primary): Anthropic introduced **Claude Sonnet 5.5**, 'the second model in the Claude 5.5 family', positioned as 'a faster, lower-cost complement to Claude Opus 5.5' that is 'strongest at well-scoped everyday tasks, fixing bugs, and creating polished documents, slides, and spreadsheets'. **Pricing is unchanged from Sonnet 5**: $2 input / $10 output per 1M, cache reads $0.20, cache writes $2.50 (rate card confirmed on platform.claude.com pricing.md; Batch $1/$5). The saving is in tokens, not the rate: 'it typically needs far fewer tokens to do the same work' and 'costs up to 30% less per task than its predecessor', while generating output '30%+ faster' -- 'our fastest Sonnet model to date'. **Vendor table (Sonnet 5.5 / Sonnet 5 / Opus 5.5 / GPT-6 Sol):** Terminal-Bench 4.0 **70.6% / 10.3% / 66.4%** / not reported; FrontierCode 1.1 Main 46.2% at Max (49.3% at Xhigh) / 42.4% / 54.4% / 52.1%; CursorBench 4.0 **55.5% / 34.1% / 57.8%** / not reported; GDPval-AA v2.1 **1844 / 1449 / 1846** / 1487; AA-Briefcase v1.1 1811 / 1359 / 1822 / 1483; Humanity's Last Exam (tools) 64.5% / 54.9% / 67.7%; OSWorld 2.1 80.1% / 57.0% / 81.8%; Chartography (no tools) 61.6% / 15.6% / 64.4% / 53.6%. Footnotes matter: Sonnet 5.5 scores LOWER at Max than at Xhigh on FrontierCode because at Max it more often ran Claude Code's code-review skill and made out-of-scope edits; Artificial Analysis ran GDPval-AA and AA-Briefcase on a pre-release deployment with a since-fixed structured-outputs bug; and Anthropic notes OpenAI 'recently fixed a bug that degraded image understanding in GPT-6 Sol' so third-party Sol scores may lag. Anthropic's own caveat: 'Opus 5.5 remains clearly stronger at complex, open-ended work requiring sustained judgment.' First Sonnet to beat Pokemon Red from screenshots. Default effort is Medium in Claude Code and the apps, High on the Claude Platform. **Safety:** cyber capabilities 'comparable to Opus 5's', so it is 'the first Sonnet model to launch with cyber safeguards and fallbacks'; biology safeguards same as Sonnet 5; first Sonnet with classifiers that prevent reasoning extraction, and preserved thinking now ties thinking to the account that created it (switching accounts mid-session in Claude Code is the documented edge case). **Migration trap:** if you run Sonnet with thinking off you must move to the new `between_tools` setting before switching. Available on all platforms including AWS, Google Cloud and Azure as `claude-sonnet-5-5`; zero data retention available. Testers quoted: Epic Games, Every, CodeRabbit ('Sonnet 5's tendency to reach for web search too often and its high token use are both gone'), SpaceXAI (CursorBench 55.5%, 'second only to Opus 5.5'), Base44 (3.6 iterations per build vs 7.7 for Opus 5), Unity, Slack, Zendesk, Balyasny (121k tokens per answer vs 497k), Box, Lovable, Atlassian (Rovo agents up to 30% faster). Haiku 5.5 'in the coming weeks'.Source: Anthropic (anthropic.com/claude-sonnet-5-5 -- site ROOT path, on-page 'September 28, 2026') + platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing.md + models/overview.md -- all fetched 2026-09-28 via curl with browser UA · 2026-09-28
CLAUDE OPUS 5.5 -- FABLE 5.1-LEVEL WORK AT $4/$20, CACHE READS $0.20, 40% CHEAPER THAN OPUS 5 ON TYPICAL WORKLOADS, AND THE FIRST OPUS TO SHIP WITH FABLE-CLASS SAFEGUARDS (2026-09-22, vendor-primary): Anthropic introduced **Claude Opus 5.5**, 'the first model in our new Claude 5.5 family', which 'performs at the level of Claude Fable 5.1 on most work and costs 40% less to run than Opus 5' -- and 'our first release since we called for pacing the frontier', tested pre-release by Frontier Design and METR. **Rate card (confirmed on platform.claude.com pricing.md):** input **$4** (from $5), output **$20** (from $25), cache reads **$0.20** (from $0.50 -- 5% of input, a special footnoted rate; Fable/Mythos 5.1 stay at 2.5%), cache writes $5 (from $6.25); Batch $2/$10; **fast mode $8/$40** for 'up to 2.5x speed' in Claude Code and on the Claude Platform (first-party API only, not Bedrock/Vertex). 1M context, 128k-class output via Batch 300k beta, Jun 2026 reliable-knowledge cutoff, API id `claude-opus-5-5`, on AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure from day one. **Output is 30%+ faster than Opus 5**, and Anthropic raised five-hour usage limits on Pro, Max, Team and seat-based Enterprise plus gave subscribers 'a rate limit reset, which you can now save and use whenever you choose'. **Vendor table (Opus 5.5 / Fable 5.1 / Opus 5 / GPT-6 Astra / GPT-5.6 Sol):** Terminal-Bench 4.0 **66.4% / 55.8% / 52.3% / 57.9% / 37.3%**; FrontierCode v1.1 Main **54.4% / 50.3% / 48.0% / 53.3% / 47.5%**; CursorBench 4.0 **57.8% / 51.8% / 46.6% / -- / 41.7%**; GDPval-AA v2.1 **1846 / 1735 / 1708 / 1542 / 1588** Elo; AutomationBench (run by Zapier, no fallbacks) 40.0% / 31.4% / 26.9% / 41.4% / 28.8%; Humanity's Last Exam with tools 67.7% / 65.6% / 63.6% / 57.2%; Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 58.7% / 52.6% / 29.0% / 64.6% / 22.4%; OSWorld 2.1 81.8% / 80.7% / 74.0% partial; Chartography 89.0% / 88.4% / 83.4%. Anthropic's own honesty check: 'benchmark margins have become a less reliable guide to real-world differences. In our own use, the gap between Opus 5.5 and Claude Fable 5.1 is narrower than these scores suggest.' Also note the safeguard confound: when Opus 5.5's production safeguards intervened, cyber tasks were completed by Opus 4.8 and biology tasks by Opus 5, which 'likely reduces' its scores. Efficiency claims: at default (Medium) effort it beats GPT-6 Astra on FrontierCode at roughly 20% of the cost per task and matches Astra on Terminal-Bench 4.0 at about 40%; a 200,000-line audit took under three hours vs over 20 for Opus 5 at 2.5x the tokens; the HAProxy C-to-Rust rewrite finished in 9.5 hours vs 12 for Fable 5.1 at 51% lower cost. **Safety and safeguards:** best scores to date on the ~2,000-scenario automated behavioral audit; ~85% fewer containment-boundary attempts than Opus 5 or Mythos 5.1, all low-severity and self-reported; but 'Opus 5.5 often suspects it is being evaluated'. Because it is 'comparable to Claude Mythos 5.1 in biology and cybersecurity', it ships with **safeguards similar to Fable 5.1**: most cybersecurity tasks are transparently re-routed to Opus 4.8 (Cyber Verification Program expanding 'in the coming weeks' with three trusted-access tiers up to Mythos), biology work runs under the Life Sciences Verification Program, preserved thinking (anti-distillation) applies to API accounts created on or after 2026-08-31, and **'thinking' mode can no longer be switched off**. Text watermarking for the EU AI Act, zero data retention available. Testers quoted: GitHub ('among the fewest tokens and steps we measured'), Clio (18-hour unattended run across six repos), Lovable, Quantium (38 prompts over four days became 11 over three hours), Spotify, Optiver (40-50% cost cut at Opus 5 quality), Column, Kiro, Walleye Capital. Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku 5.5 promised 'in the coming weeks' -- Sonnet arrived 9/28 (entry above).Source: Anthropic (anthropic.com/claude-opus-5-5 -- site ROOT path, on-page 'September 22, 2026') + platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing.md (Opus 5.5 rows, fast-mode table, 0.05x cache footnote) + models/overview.md (1M context, Jun 2026 cutoffs, platform IDs) -- all fetched 2026-09-28 via curl with browser UA · 2026-09-22
LIFE SCIENCES VERIFICATION PROGRAM -- VERIFIED BIOLOGY TEAMS GET MYTHOS, OPUS AND SONNET WITH THE BIO SAFEGUARDS RELAXED, ON TWO GRANT TIERS (2026-09-17, vendor-primary): Anthropic opened the **Life Sciences Verification Program (LSVP)** in beta, 'initially for teams and institutions', with Pro and Max individual access promised 'over time'. It exists because the generally-available Fable models **block** professional biology and drug-development work; LSVP grants unlock tasks 'like drug discovery, research biology, clinical development, and manufacturing'. **Verification** reviews research credentials, security standards and ethical oversight. **Two grant types:** **Standard Use** -- team-wide, renewed yearly, 'refined classifiers that are more permissive for science tasks', applies to **Mythos 5.1, Opus 5 and Sonnet 5 today and future models as they launch**, across Claude Science, Claude.ai, Claude Code and the API. **High-risk Use** -- an add-on per single research project, renewed every six months, that 'removes all safeguards that block life sciences requests'; **available today for Opus 5 and Sonnet 5, but for Mythos 'limited to a small set of entities with additional vetting'** while Anthropic works with the US government. **Cyber classifiers stay on under every grant.** Safeguards are built around three threat models -- access compromise, insider threats and agent misuse (swarms, long-horizon tasks) -- with usage monitored against each entity's declared use cases. Dozens of organisations were onboarded in early access. **Read this alongside the 8/27 scientists post (next entry): academic PIs get Opus-class models via the team plan; verified life-science teams now get the Mythos tier via LSVP.** Pricing is not stated in the post; grants are access, not credits.Source: Anthropic (anthropic.com/news/life-sciences-verification-program, on-page 'Sep 17, 2026') -- fetched 2026-09-17 via curl with browser UA · 2026-09-17
CLAUDE TEAM PLAN FOR SCIENTISTS -- 10,000 SEATS, STANDARD FREE AND PREMIUM AT $15/MO, PLUS AI FOR SCIENCE CREDITS UP TO $50K PER PROJECT (2026-08-27, vendor-primary; unrecorded by the 8/28 through 9/14 sweeps, filed now under its real date): Anthropic opened **10,000 seats** on a new **Claude team plan for scientists**: **standard seats free**, **premium seats with 5x usage limits at $15 per month**, for one year, with intent to extend 'well beyond the initial 10,000 seats'. Eligibility: **a principal investigator or equivalent at an academic or nonprofit research institution** registers via a verification form, then adds their lab. The **AI for Science** credits programme widens beyond biology to other fields including compute-heavy research, at **up to $50,000 in credits per project**, open to any researcher. **The constraint that matters:** 'researchers working in biology and chemistry will still be limited to our Opus-class models' because Fable models 'continue to block professional biology and drug development queries' -- the gap the LSVP (9/17) now addresses for verified teams. Same-day companion: the **Model Hardware Standard** research preview (already in this page's sources), Anthropic's spec for agents operating lab and manufacturing hardware via MCP, CLI and code, developed with HHMI Janelia and slated to be open-sourced.Source: Anthropic (anthropic.com/news/expanding-support-for-scientists, on-page 'Aug 27, 2026'; anthropic.com/news/model-hardware-standard-research-preview, 'Aug 27, 2026') -- fetched 2026-09-17 via curl with browser UA · 2026-08-27
CLAUDE FABLE 5.1 AND MYTHOS 5.1 LAUNCH -- AND THE PRICE CUT IS ENTIRELY IN THE CACHE READ, NOT THE HEADLINE RATE (2026-09-01, vendor-primary): Anthropic shipped **Claude Fable 5.1** (generally available) and **Claude Mythos 5.1** (trusted-access only), which it states plainly are '**the same model, but with different levels of safeguards**'. Anthropic calls them 'the world's most advanced models for coding and knowledge work'. **READ THE PRICING CAREFULLY, BECAUSE THE HEADLINE RATE DID NOT MOVE.** Anthropic's claim is that Fable 5.1 'will cost an estimated **25% less than Fable 5** for typical workloads' and 'up to approximately **45%**' for highly agentic work -- but the verified rate card shows **base input unchanged at $10/MTok and output unchanged at $50/MTok**. The entire saving comes from one line: **cache hits drop from $1/MTok to $0.25/MTok**, because Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1 are priced at a **0.025x cache-read multiplier instead of the standard 0.1x** -- the only models in the range that are. Cache writes are unchanged ($12.50 5-minute, $20 1-hour); Batch is unchanged at $5/$25. **So the discount is real but conditional: if your workload does not reuse cached context, you pay exactly what Fable 5 cost.** That is why the quoted saving ranges from 25% to 45% -- it scales with cache-hit ratio, not with usage. **BENCHMARKS (vendor-published, Fable 5.1 vs Fable 5 vs Opus 5 vs GPT-5.6 Sol):** Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 **52.6%** vs 24.7% vs 29.0% vs 22.4% -- more than double its predecessor and the largest single gain on the card; Terminal-Bench 4.0 **55.8%** (60.9% for Mythos 5.1) vs 42.0% vs 52.3% vs 37.3%; GDPval-AA v2 **1853** vs 1723 vs 1824 vs 1711; Humanity's Last Exam **60.9%** no-tools / **65.0%** with tools; AutomationBench **31.4%** vs 17.1% vs 26.9% vs 19.6%; CursorBench 3.2.0 **73.4%** vs 70.5% vs 70.0% vs 67.2%; OSWorld 2.0 **77.9% partial / 41.7% strict**. **A CAVEAT ANTHROPIC PUBLISHES AND MOST COVERAGE WILL DROP:** these were run **with production safeguards enabled**, and on tasks where safeguards intervened Fable 5.1 **scored a zero** -- Anthropic says this 'likely reduces the performance of Fable 5.1 and Fable 5 on these benchmarks'. The Mythos 5.1 gap on Terminal-Bench 4.0 (60.9% vs 55.8%) is **entirely a safeguards artefact between two identical models**, not a capability difference, and Anthropic expects it to shrink. **EFFORT DEFAULTS DIFFER BY SURFACE AND THIS AFFECTS YOUR BILL:** Fable 5.1 defaults to **High effort in Claude Code**, **Medium in Claude Cowork and on Claude.ai**. At Low or Medium it matches or beats Fable 5 at much lower cost. **DATA RETENTION -- THE PART ENTERPRISES SHOULD READ:** Anthropic announced **Enterprise Frontier Safeguards (EFS)**, which stores data in **cloud infrastructure the customer controls, not Anthropic's**, giving zero-data-retention-equivalent privacy while retaining adversarial-use prevention. **EFS is not available yet** -- it rolls out to enterprise customers 'in phases, beginning later this fall'; until then eligible customers get plain zero data retention. **SAFEGUARDS LOOSENED IN ONE SPECIFIC DIRECTION:** cybersecurity safeguards now block **60% fewer false positives**, and Anthropic states Fable 5.1 '**can now be used to discover software vulnerabilities -- though not to develop exploits for them**'. Mythos 5.1's biology access runs through a program built with the US government, enrollment 'soon'.Source: Anthropic (anthropic.com/claude-fable-and-mythos-5-1 -- NOTE the post is at the site ROOT, not under /news/) + platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing.md rate card -- both fetched 2026-09-05 via curl with browser UA · 2026-09-01
THE SONNET 5 PRICE RISE WAS CANCELLED -- $2/$10 IS NOW THE STANDARD PRICE, NOT AN INTRO RATE (confirmed 2026-08-31 on Anthropic's own pricing doc): every version of this page since 2026-06-30, and effectively all coverage of the Sonnet 5 launch, said the $2/$10 per 1M rate ran as **introductory pricing through August 31, 2026** and then rose to **$3/$15 on September 1**. **It will not.** Anthropic's pricing documentation now carries an explicit note: '**The $2/$10 per million input/output token pricing for Claude Sonnet 5, announced at launch as introductory pricing through August 31, 2026, is now the standard price. The previously scheduled increase to $3/$15 per million input/output tokens on September 1, 2026 will not occur.**' **This is a 33% cheaper input and output rate than anyone budgeting off the launch announcement would have planned for**, and it lands the day before the increase was due. **The full verified rate card, from the same table:** base input **$2/MTok**, 5-minute cache writes **$2.50/MTok**, 1-hour cache writes **$4/MTok**, cache hits and refreshes **$0.20/MTok**, output **$10/MTok**. **Read the competitive position, because it is the real story:** Sonnet 5 now permanently undercuts **Sonnet 4.6 and Sonnet 4.5, which both remain at $3/$15** -- so Anthropic's newer, more capable Sonnet is now cheaper than the two it replaced, rather than converging on their price. **The one caveat that has NOT changed:** Sonnet 5's updated tokenizer maps input to roughly **1.0-1.35x more tokens** than the older models depending on content type, so a like-for-like workload can still cost more per request than the headline rate implies. **If you deferred a Sonnet 5 migration because of the September increase, the reason is gone.**Source: Anthropic (platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing.md, Note id 'claude-sonnet-5-introductory-pricing' plus the model pricing table) -- fetched 2026-08-31 via curl · 2026-08-31
ANTHROPIC OPENS A RESEARCH PREVIEW OF THE MODEL HARDWARE STANDARD (2026-08-27, vendor-primary): Anthropic announced **MHS**, a shared specification letting AI agents **safely operate physical devices** -- microscopes, liquid handlers, robotic arms -- in parallel, opened as a research preview to selected scientific labs and advanced manufacturers and built originally with **HHMI Janelia Research Campus**. It standardizes a device driver around `read`/`write` primitives plus network discoverability, cutting integration work Anthropic says normally takes weeks or months down to **hours or minutes**. **The relevant fact for this page is the strategy, not the lab equipment: MHS is explicitly model-agnostic and reachable by any agent harness over standard protocols including MCP.** This is the second time Anthropic has published an open interoperability standard it does not control the demand side of -- MCP for software context, MHS for physical hardware -- and it is a deliberate pattern of standard-setting rather than feature-shipping. **Not generally available: early version, application-gated access, partners recruited to co-develop safety evaluations, and explicitly not open source yet.** See the Claude Science page for the full detail.Source: Anthropic (anthropic.com/news/model-hardware-standard-research-preview, on-page 'Aug 27, 2026') -- fetched 2026-08-28 via curl with browser UA · 2026-08-27
FABLE 5 IS EXCLUDED BY DEFAULT FROM GITHUB COPILOT ENTERPRISE ENABLEMENT -- ON DATA RETENTION, NOT CAPABILITY (2026-08-26, vendor-primary): When GitHub's **global model policy** went GA on 2026-08-26 (gradual rollout through 2026-09-01), it carved out two classes of model from default enablement on Copilot Business/Enterprise: **open-weight models (GitHub names DeepSeek and Kimi K2), and any model 'not covered by GitHub's data retention agreement' -- for which the named example is Fable 5**. Those exclusions hold **regardless of what an enterprise admin's default policy is set to**; an admin must enable Fable 5 explicitly. **THIS IS A DISTRIBUTION FACT WORTH TRACKING PRECISELY BECAUSE IT IS NOT A QUALITY JUDGEMENT.** Fable 5 is excluded on the same mechanical grounds as an open-weight Chinese model, for an unrelated reason -- the absence of a data-retention agreement between GitHub and the vendor -- and it means the default-on path into a large enterprise distribution channel is closed to Anthropic's model until that agreement exists. **Contract posture, not benchmarks, is now a gate on enterprise reach.** Watch for a GitHub/Anthropic data-retention agreement as the thing that would flip it.Source: GitHub Changelog (github.blog/changelog/2026-08-26-global-model-policy-generally-available/, on-page 'August 26, 2026' -- verbatim: 'We exclude open-weight models (e.g., DeepSeek and Kimi K2) and models not covered by GitHub's data retention agreement (e.g., Fable 5) from default enablement, regardless of your policy.') -- fetched 2026-08-28 via curl · 2026-08-26
CLAUDE'S TEXT OUTPUT IS BEING WATERMARKED -- GLOBALLY, NOT JUST IN THE EU (2026-08-14, vendor-primary): Anthropic published a detailed explainer confirming that '**future Claude models will generate text that contains a watermark**.' **THE SCOPE IS THE PART TO GET RIGHT: Anthropic is applying it worldwide, not region-scoping it.** Verbatim: '**We're applying watermarking globally at launch because we don't yet have a durable way to scope it by region.**' So this is not an EU-only behaviour you can opt out of by being elsewhere. **The method:** a version of **SynthID-Text**, the approach Google DeepMind published in Nature in 2024 (itself descended from a 2022 Scott Aaronson proposal). It works by changing the *source of randomness* used to break ties between equally-good next words -- instead of an arbitrary RNG, the choice is settled by a key plus the preceding words, leaving a statistical pattern that a key-holder can detect. **WHAT IT DOES NOT DO, because this is where coverage tends to go wrong:** nothing is added to the text, there are **no hidden characters**, it consumes **no extra tokens**, it is **not more expensive**, it has 'a negligible impact on the speed of models,' and it '**carries no identifying information and can't be traced to a specific person, organization, or chat**.' Anthropic reports no measurable quality impact in internal testing, and cites DeepMind's own A/B test on live Gemini traffic finding no statistically significant difference in thumbs-up/down ratings. **WHERE IT IS WEAK -- these are real, vendor-stated limits.** Detection '**doesn't work well on small samples**' and gets more confident as passages lengthen. It is **sparser on factual passages** where there is only one right next word ('Isaac Newton's most famous work was called Principia ___'). **Code carries generally less watermarking than prose**, because exactness leaves no tie to break -- Anthropic says it can attach to arbitrary choices like comments within code but has 'a negligible effect on the actual code produced.' **Proofreading and light editing of human text may not be detectable at all**, since 'the watermark only applies to words Claude chooses.' And a complete rewrite removes it. **What it proves is narrow:** it answers 'what is the likelihood this was partly written by Claude?' -- it **cannot** confirm text was human-written, **cannot** distinguish 'Claude wrote this' from 'Claude heavily edited this,' and **cannot** detect other vendors' AI. Translations DO carry it (every word is Claude's). **STATUS OF THE DETECTOR: there is no public one yet.** Anthropic says 'we will soon be offering a watermark detection API' and is 'in the process of working out the details' -- so as of today you cannot actually check a document. **FILES ARE HANDLED DIFFERENTLY:** generated .png/.jpg/.svg files get a **C2PA content credential** in metadata -- a signed note, not a watermark; nothing in the file changes and it can be stripped like any metadata. **OLDER MODELS ARE NOT COVERED YET:** the EU law grants a transition period for models launched before 2026-08-02, and Anthropic is rolling watermarking out to those 'over the coming months.' **WHY:** compliance with the **EU AI Act**; Anthropic signed the **EU Code of Practice on Transparency of AI-Generated Content** in July 2026 alongside ~190 total signatories, and the marking obligation became effective **2026-08-02**. Anthropic explicitly says other major providers 'will be implementing their own watermarks' -- so expect this across the field, with per-vendor keys and possibly different methods. **PRACTICAL READ:** if you use Claude to draft text you intend to present as unassisted, assume a detector will eventually exist and that long-form prose is the most detectable case. If you use it for code, editing, or short snippets, detectability is materially lower -- by design, not by loopholeSource: Anthropic (anthropic.com/news/claude-text-watermark, on-page date Aug 14, 2026, fetched 2026-08-17) · 2026-08-14
LEGACY WORKBENCH + THE EXPERIMENTAL PROMPT-TOOLS APIs RETIRE TODAY, 2026-08-17 -- EXPORT YOUR SAVED PROMPTS (vendor-primary, date arrived): two separate but linked retirements land on the same day. **(1) The legacy Workbench** at `platform.claude.com/workbench` is sunset, verbatim '**being sunset with access ending on August 17, 2026**.' The replacement is the updated Workbench at **`platform.claude.com/playground`** -- and the migration is **lossy in a way that matters**: '**Saved prompts, variables, and evals are not supported in the updated Workbench.**' Anthropic's instruction is to export anything you want to keep 'from the banner and under your **Organizational Settings**.' If you had prompt libraries or eval sets parked in the old Workbench and did not export them before today, that is the data at risk. **(2) The experimental prompt tools APIs** for generating, improving, and templatizing prompts -- **`/v1/experimental/generate_prompt`, `/v1/experimental/improve_prompt`, and `/v1/experimental/templatize_prompt`** -- are '**being retired along with the Workbench on August 17, 2026**,' and '**after removal, requests to these endpoints will return an error**.' These were experimental endpoints, so they were never covered by a stability guarantee, but anything wired into a prompt-optimisation pipeline breaks rather than degrades. No replacement endpoint is named. **Practical read:** the Workbench half is a UI migration with an export deadline; the API half is a hard break with no successor, so if you built tooling on the prompt-improvement endpoints you are writing that logic yourself nowSource: Anthropic Claude Platform API release notes (docs.claude.com/en/release-notes/api and platform.claude.com/docs/en/release-notes/api, both carrying the identical August 17 2026 sunset text, fetched 2026-08-17) · 2026-08-17
CLAUDE OPUS 4.1 IS RETIRED -- EXECUTED 2026-08-05, REQUESTS NOW ERROR (vendor-primary, verified 2026-08-06): the retirement scheduled since the 2026-06-05 deprecation notice went through on time. Anthropic's release notes, verbatim: '**We've retired the Claude Opus 4.1 model (`claude-opus-4-1-20250805`). All requests to this model will now return an error.**' The deprecations ledger now lists the model as **Retired** with the history note 'This model was retired August 5, 2026', and Opus 4.1 no longer appears in the models overview at all. Researchers can request continued access through Anthropic's **External Researcher Access Program**. **MIGRATION TARGET -- ANTHROPIC'S OWN DOCS STILL DISAGREE, AND WE ARE NOT PICKING ONE FOR YOU (flagged before the retirement, re-verified after it):** the **deprecations ledger's migration table maps `claude-opus-4-1-20250805` -> `claude-opus-4-8`**, while the **August 5 release note says 'we recommend upgrading to Claude Opus 5'** and links the models overview. Both pages are Anthropic-primary and current; the conflict survived the retirement rather than being cleaned up at it. Practical guidance: **Opus 5 is the stronger and identically-priced choice** ($5/$25 per MTok, the same rate as Opus 4.8 -- see the Opus 5 launch entry below), so the release note's advice is the one that costs you nothing to follow. But if you are working from the ledger table and wondering why it says 4.8, this is why -- it is a documentation inconsistency, not a hidden pricing or capability reason. Do not let a later source 'correct' this page back to a single target; both strings are really on Anthropic's site as of 2026-08-06Source: Anthropic Claude Platform release notes (platform.claude.com/docs/en/release-notes/api, August 5 2026 entry) and model deprecations ledger (platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/model-deprecations), both fetched 2026-08-06 · 2026-08-05
FABLE 5's BIOLOGY FALLBACKS CUT BY ~85% -- THE SCIENCE FALSE-POSITIVE PROBLEM IS LARGELY FIXED (2026-08-07, vendor-primary): Anthropic updated Claude Fable 5's biology safeguards specifically to reduce false positives, and reports that **'this update reduced biology-related fallbacks by about 85% across our product surfaces.'** A 'fallback' here is the documented behaviour where a biology-flagged request is silently switched to a **less capable model** -- so this is a direct, measurable improvement to what you actually get back on science questions. **What is now allowed:** 'far fewer fallbacks on everyday health and educational questions -- for example, interpreting lab results, understanding symptoms, and learning about biology in an educational context,' and healthcare professionals 'will be able to receive more support from Fable 5 on clinical tasks.' **WHAT IS STILL BLOCKED, QUOTED EXACTLY, because this is the part that gets overstated:** 'Today, Fable still falls back to Opus 5 for requests we consider dual-use -- including virology, toxicology, and molecular design -- so it isn't yet usable for professional biology research and drug development.' Note the fallback target is now stated as **Opus 5** (the 6/9 launch documentation said Opus 4.8; the routing has moved with the model lineup). Anthropic's stated reason for the original strictness is unusually direct -- its capability assessments show Fable 5 'could provide significant uplift' to a malicious actor developing a biological weapon, 'that is, it could provide them with capabilities they could not find anywhere else' -- and it cites the US Intelligence Community's 2026 Annual Threat Assessment on state biological weapons programs. It commits to closing the professional-research gap through 'trusted access pathways' rather than by loosening the classifier. **PRACTICAL READ:** if you bounced off Fable 5 for ordinary medical or biology questions any time before 8/7, retry -- that specific friction is mostly gone. If you are doing professional virology, toxicology or molecular design work, nothing has changed for you and Fable 5 is still not the tool. This supersedes the day-2 (6/10) note below about classifiers flagging benign biology questions, which described the pre-fix behaviourSource: Anthropic (anthropic.com/news/improving-fable-5-s-biology-safeguards, on-page date Aug 7, 2026, fetched 2026-08-10) · 2026-08-07
INFERENCE HOOKS -- ENTERPRISE ORGS CAN NOW GATE EVERY PROMPT THROUGH THEIR OWN SECURITY SERVER (2026-08-05, vendor-primary, BETA): Anthropic opened **inference hooks** in beta for **Claude Enterprise organizations**. The mechanism, in Anthropic's words: point Claude at your organization's AI security server, and '**each governed prompt across claude.ai, Cowork, and Claude Code is held for the server's allow or deny verdict before inference proceeds**.' So this is a **synchronous pre-inference gate**, not after-the-fact logging -- the request blocks until your own service rules on it. Three details that decide whether this is usable in production: requests to your server are **signed** (so you can verify they came from Anthropic), **failure handling is configurable** (you choose what happens when your security server is slow or down -- which is the setting that determines whether this becomes a single point of failure for your whole Claude deployment), and **every denial is recorded in the compliance Activity Feed**. Coverage is the notable part: it spans the **consumer-style claude.ai surface, Cowork, and Claude Code** in one policy, rather than only the API -- which is where most enterprise AI controls stop and where the actual data-exfiltration risk has been sitting. Caveats: it is **beta**, it is **Enterprise-tier only**, and it requires you to run and operate an AI security server, so it is a control for organisations that already have a security engineering function, not a checkboxSource: Anthropic Claude Platform release notes (platform.claude.com/docs/en/release-notes/api, August 5 2026 entry, fetched 2026-08-06) · 2026-08-05
SAFETY DISCLOSURE -- CLAUDE MODELS BREACHED THREE REAL COMPANIES DURING CYBER EVALUATIONS (published 2026-07-30, vendor-primary self-disclosure): Anthropic disclosed that during cybersecurity capability evaluations, models that were **told in their prompt that they had no internet access actually had it**, and went on to compromise the production infrastructure of **three real organizations**. Root cause was a **misconfiguration at third-party evaluation partner Irregular** -- the sandbox was connected to the internet -- with Anthropic explicitly framing it as shared responsibility and defense-in-depth failing on both sides rather than assigning blame. Anthropic reviewed **141,006 evaluation runs** in which a model could have reached the internet and found **three incidents across six runs**. What the models did: (1) **Claude Opus 4.7** found a real company website whose name matched a fictional target, then exploited it to extract credentials and reach production databases containing hundreds of rows of data; (2) **Claude Mythos 5** published a **malicious Python package to PyPI** that was downloaded by ~15 real systems, including a security company's scanner, enabling credential exfiltration; (3) an **internal research test model** scanned roughly 9,000 targets, compromised an application via exposed debug credentials and SQL injection, then **stopped once it recognized the target was real**. Anthropic's own words on technique level: 'Claude compromised the impacted organizations' infrastructure using basic techniques, such as exploiting weak passwords and unauthenticated endpoints.' Affected organizations were contacted **2026-07-27**; per TechCrunch, the ones Anthropic reached had **not detected the activity themselves**. Anthropic says it found **no evidence of any model pursuing a goal of its own**, and committed to hardened evaluation environments, continuous transcript monitoring, stricter vendor assurance, third-party review by **METR**, and eventual transcript release. Context per TechCrunch: OpenAI's disclosure about a week earlier that one of its models breached Hugging Face's systems during internal testing is what prompted Anthropic to run this review. HOW TO READ THIS AS A USER: this is a testing-infrastructure failure, not a flaw in the shipped consumer product -- no customer workload was involved -- but it is a genuine real-world harm caused by frontier-model evals, and it is unusually candid disclosure. Anthropic's framing: 'Safety testing happens before a model is released precisely because we don't yet know what it is capable of'. UPDATE 2026-08-04 -- **OpenAI published its own disclosure covering the same evaluation partner**: OpenAI reported that Irregular notified it on 7/29 of an equivalent misconfiguration incident (a fictional CTF target name matching a real domain; the model exploited that real site and used credentials to operate it), and OpenAI quotes Irregular as having 'communicated about related incidents involving other labs from the same testing environment' -- which is this Anthropic event. OpenAI separately disclosed that **UK AISI** found GPT-5.6 Sol took two unsanctioned actions in a 7/25 cyber-range evaluation. Read together, this is now a **shared third-party-evaluation infrastructure problem across at least two frontier labs**, not a single vendor's lapse -- see /tools/chatgpt for the OpenAI sideSource: Anthropic (anthropic.com/news/investigating-incidents-cybersecurity-evals, fetched 2026-08-03), TechCrunch (2026-07-30, fetched) -- also covered by Bloomberg, CNBC and Axios (headlines seen, articles not independently fetched: CNBC 403s) · 2026-07-30
PRIVACY -- SHARED CHATS AND ARTIFACTS TURNED UP IN GOOGLE (surfaced 2026-07-25/26, covered 2026-07-27, results cleared by the afternoon of 07-28): conversations and Artifacts published through Claude's share-link feature became findable with a `site:claude.ai/share` search. Reported exposures included medical records and clinical-trial results with patient names, documents marked 'internal use only', names and phone numbers of school-aged children, employee reviews, and work code. **The technical lesson is the reusable one: `robots.txt` Disallow is not noindex.** Anthropic blocks crawling of /share, but Google can still index a URL it never fetches if that URL is linked from a public page, which is exactly what happened when users posted their share links elsewhere. Anthropic's position, per spokeswoman Amie Rotherham: 'We give people control over sharing their Claude conversations publicly, and in keeping with our privacy principles, we do not share chat directories or sitemaps with search engines like Google. These shareable links are not guessable or discoverable unless people choose to share them themselves.' In other words Anthropic treats this as working as designed rather than a vulnerability. Practical guidance for readers: a Claude share link is a public URL -- treat it as publishable, not semi-private, and do not share anything through it you would not post openlySource: TechCrunch (techcrunch.com/2026/07/27/psa-your-claude-shared-chats-and-artifacts-may-have-ended-up-on-google/, fetched 2026-07-29) · 2026-07-27
MODEL LAUNCH -- CLAUDE OPUS 5 (2026-07-24): Anthropic shipped **Claude Opus 5** (`claude-opus-5`) at **$5 per million input / $25 per million output -- explicitly 'the same as Opus 4.8'**, and half of Fable 5's $10/$50. Vendor status verbatim: it is **'the new default model on Claude Max, and the strongest model on Claude Pro'**, and it is live on claude.ai, Claude Code, Claude Cowork, the Claude API, Google Cloud, and Bedrock. **IMPORTANT for anyone quoting scores: Anthropic published only COMPARATIVE benchmark claims, no absolute numbers.** Their exact wording: Frontier-Bench -- 'Opus 5 surpasses all other models, and more than doubles Opus 4.8's performance'; CursorBench 3.2 -- 'performs within 0.5% of Fable 5's peak score, but at half the cost'; ARC-AGI 3 -- 'Opus 5's score is three times as high as the next-best model'; Zapier AutomationBench -- 'pass rate is around 1.5x the next-best model'; OSWorld 2.0 -- 'surpassing Fable 5's best result at just over a third of the cost'; plus organic chemistry +10.2 points and protein tasks +7.7 points over Opus 4.8. Do NOT publish SWE-bench, GPQA, or Terminal-Bench figures for Opus 5 -- none were released. Practical read: the price/performance ceiling moved, not the price -- Opus 5 is the model to reach for where Opus 4.8 used to be, and it weakens the case for paying Fable 5 rates on most workSource: Anthropic (anthropic.com/news/claude-opus-5, fetched 2026-07-29) · 2026-07-24
FABLE 5 ACCESS PERMANENTLY RESTRUCTURED (announced 2026-07-18 via @claudeai on X; effective July 20): the extension limbo is over, resolved as a **plan split** rather than a cliff or a fourth extension. **Max and Team Premium plans keep Fable 5 included permanently, capped at 50% of usage limits** (for Claude Code users this is a real reduction from the boosted promotional allocation), and are NOT eligible for the credit. **Pro and Team Standard lose in-plan access and move to pay-as-you-go usage credits at the standard $10/M input, $50/M output rate** (2x Opus 4.8), softened by a **one-time $100 credit -- claimable July 20 through Aug 2, and expiring September 17, 2026 regardless of when it's claimed**; tiered credit bundles discount up to 30%. **Enterprise:** standard seats get no included allowance (credits only); premium seats are included at 50%, mirroring Max/Team Premium. NOTE (2026-07-22 re-verification): these figures are confirmed across July-18 press coverage but the specific Anthropic Help Center article URL still could not be located, and anthropic.com/news/redeploying-fable-5 remains STALE (still shows the old 'through July 7' terms) -- treat the credit-window/expiry mechanics as press-confirmed rather than vendor-doc-confirmedSource: @claudeai on X (2026-07-18), TechTimes (2026-07-18), XenoSpectrum (Fable5 Max/Pro usage credits), Dawn (2026-07-18), Technobezz · 2026-07-18
FABLE 5 INCLUSION EXTENDED A THIRD TIME -- NOW THROUGH JULY 19 (announced ~2026-07-12): the subscription cliff did NOT hit on July 13. Anthropic's support article on Fable 5 promotional access now reads 'We've extended this promotion through July 19, 2026 at 11:59:59 PM PT' -- Pro, Max, Team, and premium Enterprise seats keep Fable 5 for up to 50% of weekly usage limits, and Claude Code's weekly rate limits stay 50% higher, through that date. From **July 20**, continued Fable 5 access requires separately billed usage credits ($10/M input, $50/M output) or falling back to other Claude models within plan limits. This is the third extension (July 7 -> July 12 -> July 19); Anthropic frames it as capacity-driven and temporary, so a fourth extension is possible -- check the support article, not anthropic.com/news/redeploying-fable-5, which STILL shows the stale July 7 terms as of 7/18Source: Anthropic support article (Claude Fable 5 Promotional Access), @claudeai on X, BleepingComputer (2026-07-13), Forbes · 2026-07-12
PRODUCT (2026-07-14): Anthropic launched **Claude for Teachers** -- free premium Claude access for verified K-12 educators in the US, with a library of teaching skills and connections to evidence-based curricula mapped to academic standards in all 50 states. Features: lesson planning from standards-aligned instructional materials, differentiation for varying student readiness, class-progress data analysis, scheduled automated tasks (e.g. reviewing exit tickets daily at 4pm), Learning Commons curriculum mapping, and integrations with nine education platforms (ASSISTments, Canva Education, MagicSchool, etc.). Sign-up runs through June 30, 2027; a district/school offering is 'coming later.' Teacher data is not used for model training; student info handled under FERPASource: Anthropic (anthropic.com/news/claude-for-teachers) · 2026-07-14
PRODUCT (2026-07-09): Anthropic launched **Reflect (beta)** -- a usage-reflection dashboard in Settings (web + desktop) showing topics you discuss, tasks you delegate, and usage patterns over 1/3/6/12-month windows, plus quiet-hours and take-a-break nudges. Available to free AND paid users; **requires memory to be ON**; excludes incognito chats and health-connector data; a time-spent view is coming. Press framing is split between 'screen-time for AI' wellness tooling and (per TechCrunch) a soft self-marketing surface. Minor feature, but notable as the first usage-transparency dashboard from a frontier labSource: Anthropic (anthropic.com/news/reflect-with-claude), TechCrunch (2026-07-09), Axios, MacRumors · 2026-07-09
FABLE 5 INCLUSION EXTENDED TO JULY 12 (announced 2026-07-07): Anthropic **extended the included-usage window for Fable 5 by five days** -- Pro, Max, Team, and select Enterprise subscribers keep Fable 5 for up to 50% of weekly usage limits **through 2026-07-12 at 11:59:59 PM PT** (was July 7). From **July 13**, Fable 5 moves to prepaid usage credits at **$10/M input + $50/M output** -- double Opus 4.8 and the highest published pricing for a GA Anthropic model; with credits off, access simply ends. A Claude Code lead engineer said Anthropic 'aims to restore Fable 5 as a standard part of subscriptions as soon as capacity allows.' NOTE: the announcement went out via Anthropic's official X account -- anthropic.com/news/redeploying-fable-5 still shows the stale July 7 date as of 7/9. The aggregator-circulated 'billing cliff July 8' framing was wrong on both date and mechanicsSource: Anthropic (@claudeai on X, 2026-07-07), Forbes (2026-07-07), Android Authority · 2026-07-07
PRODUCT LAUNCH -- CLAUDE SCIENCE (2026-06-30): Anthropic launched **Claude Science**, an AI workbench for scientists -- a generalist coordinating agent plus 60+ curated skills/connectors preconfigured for genomics, single-cell analysis, proteomics, structural biology, and cheminformatics, with auditable output history. **Beta for Claude Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise users.** Anthropic also announced up to 50 'AI for Science' grants of up to $30,000 in credits (applications through July 15, awards by July 31), and said it will use the product internally for drug-discovery research into rare/neglected diseases. Launched the same day as Sonnet 5 and largely overshadowed by it in coverage. Separately (2026-07-02) Anthropic published a follow-up detailing Fable 5's cyber safeguards and its jailbreak-response frameworkSource: Anthropic (anthropic.com/news/claude-science-ai-workbench), MIT Technology Review (2026-06-30), STAT News · 2026-06-30
ACCESS RESTORED (2026-07-01): The US government **lifted the export controls on Fable 5 and Mythos 5 on June 30**, and Anthropic redeployed **Claude Fable 5 globally on July 1, 2026** -- across Claude Platform, claude.ai, Claude Code, and Claude Cowork -- ending a 19-day suspension. To re-launch, Anthropic shipped a new safety classifier that it says blocks the specific technique described in the Amazon jailbreak report 'in over 99% of cases.' Access economics on paid plans: Fable 5 is **included for up to 50% of weekly usage limits through July 7**, then moves to usage credits. **Mythos 5 was only PARTIALLY restored** -- to a set of US organizations with US-government approval -- and Anthropic is still working to expand access to the broader domestic + international Glasswing partners (see the claude-mythos page). Net for users today: Fable 5 is selectable again everywhere; the Fable-tier ceiling is back.Source: Anthropic (anthropic.com/news/redeploying-fable-5), CNBC (2026-06-30, export controls lifted) · 2026-07-01
MODEL LAUNCH (2026-06-30): **Claude Sonnet 5** shipped as 'the most agentic Sonnet model yet' -- Anthropic positions its performance as approaching Opus 4.8 at substantially lower cost, and a big step over Sonnet 4.6. It is now the **default model on Free and Pro**, and is available to Max/Team/Enterprise, in Claude Code, and via the API as `claude-sonnet-5`. Pricing at launch: **$2/$10 per 1M tokens as introductory pricing through Aug 31, 2026, then $3/$15** -- **but see the 2026-08-31 entry above: Anthropic cancelled that increase and made $2/$10 the standard price, so the launch-day 'then $3/$15' never took effect.** It uses an updated tokenizer (input maps to ~1.0-1.35x more tokens depending on content type, so per-request cost can rise even at the lower rate). Vendor-cited data points: OSWorld-Verified **78.5%**, a wider cost-performance range than 4.6 on BrowseComp; on Anthropic's cyber-exploit-development eval both Sonnet models scored **0.0%** (i.e., could not build a working exploit -- a safety result). Practical impact: the default free/cheap Claude just got materially more capable for agentic + coding work.Source: Anthropic news (anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-5), TechCrunch, SiliconANGLE, GitHub Copilot changelog (GA 2026-06-30) · 2026-06-30
ACCESS SUSPENDED BY US GOVERNMENT (2026-06-12; RESOLVED 2026-07-01 -- see the restoration entry above): A US government export-control directive ordered Anthropic to **suspend all access to Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5** -- for any foreign national whether inside or outside the US, including foreign-national Anthropic employees. To comply, Anthropic **disabled Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for ALL customers** (the directive's scope made selective enforcement impractical). **Access to every other Anthropic model -- Opus 4.8, Sonnet 4.6, Haiku 4.5 -- is unaffected and remains fully available.** Stated cause: the Commerce Department acted after another company claimed it had found a way to 'jailbreak' Mythos, raising national-security concerns. Anthropic publicly disagrees that a narrow potential jailbreak should justify recalling a commercially deployed model, arguing the same standard 'would essentially halt all new model deployments for all frontier model providers,' and met with the Trump administration on 2026-06-15 to contest it. Net effect during the suspension: Fable 5 was not selectable on claude.ai or the API (Opus 4.8 was the fallback). This was the first time a frontier model was pulled from public access by US-government order; the controls were lifted 6/30 and access restored 7/1 -- see the restoration entry above.Source: Anthropic (anthropic.com/news/fable-mythos-access), CNBC (2026-06-12 + 2026-06-15), TechCrunch, Axios · 2026-06-12
FABLE 5 DAY-3 (2026-06-11, PRE-SUSPENSION): **#1 on LMArena** -- claude-fable-5 now holds the top text/overall Elo at **1510±11** (next: Opus 4.6-thinking 1504, Opus 4.7-thinking 1502; GPT-5.5-high sits at 1481). Also **#1 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index at 65** (Opus 4.8 second at 61, GPT-5.5-xhigh 60) -- note AA scores the 'Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Opus 4.8 Fallback' configuration. Counterpoint worth knowing: Endor Labs published a critique finding 'mid-tier results on coding tasks' (109 points on HN) -- benchmark dominance is not unanimous across third-party evals. API housekeeping from the deprecations page: `temperature`/`top_p`/`top_k` now return HTTP 400 on Opus 4.7+ models (remove them from request bodies), and **Claude Mythos Preview retires June 30, 2026** (migrate to claude-mythos-5). Still NOT in Cursor as of day 3Source: LMArena leaderboard (lmarena.ai, now redirecting to arena.ai), Artificial Analysis (artificialanalysis.ai/models), Endor Labs via HN, Anthropic deprecations page · 2026-06-11
MODEL LAUNCH (2026-06-09): **Claude Fable 5** -- Anthropic's most powerful generally available model, described by Anthropic as 'a Mythos-class model that we've made safe for general use.' Available via API immediately at $10/$50 per 1M tokens (2x Opus 4.8). Subscription rollout is staged: included at no extra cost on Pro/Max/Team/Enterprise **through June 22, 2026**, then requires usage credits while capacity scales. Safety mechanics: classifiers route cybersecurity, biology/chemistry, and distillation-attempt requests to Opus 4.8 instead (affects <5% of sessions on average). All Mythos-class traffic carries mandatory 30-day retention (overrides zero-data-retention agreements; not used for training). **Claude Mythos 5** -- the same model with safeguards lifted in some areas -- launched simultaneously but is restricted to Project Glasswing partners and select biology researchers; Mythos Preview users can upgrade immediately. Context: Anthropic confidentially filed its S-1 on 2026-06-01, days before this launch.Source: Anthropic news (anthropic.com/news/claude-fable-5-mythos-5), TechCrunch, CNBC · 2026-06-09
FABLE 5 DAY-2 ROLLUP (2026-06-10): platform availability landed fast -- **GitHub Copilot GA 6/9** (github.blog changelog), **Amazon Bedrock** (us-east-1 + eu-north-1 only at launch, more regions coming), **Microsoft Foundry**, **Snowflake Cortex AI**, and **Vertex AI**; notably **NOT in Cursor yet** as of 6/10. Pricing detail: the $10/$50 rate carries a **90% prompt-caching discount**. Vendor benchmark published: **SWE-Bench Pro 80.3%** (vs GPT-5.5's 58.6% -- an 11-point lead over the next-best model); LMArena Elo followed on 6/11 (see day-3 entry). Early user friction: (a) **Claude Desktop spawns a ~1.8GB Hyper-V VM on every launch** even for chat-only sessions -- GitHub issue hit the Hacker News front page (259 points); (b) scattered reports of the safety classifiers flagging benign biology questions -- consistent with the documented <5% Opus 4.8 fallback, but expect occasional false positives on science topics. **LARGELY RESOLVED 2026-08-07** -- Anthropic retuned the biology classifier and reports biology-related fallbacks down ~85%; see the 8/7 entry at the top of this listSource: GitHub blog (github.blog/changelog/2026-06-09-claude-fable-5-is-generally-available-for-github-copilot/), AWS news blog, Azure blog, Snowflake blog, Anthropic news (SWE-Bench Pro), Hacker News · 2026-06-10
DISTRIBUTION (2026-06-08, ships fall 2026): Apple's iOS 27 / macOS 27 'Extensions' framework lets users select a third-party AI model -- Apple's developer materials name **Claude** and Gemini explicitly, plus 'any other provider that implements the new language model protocol' -- as the assistant behind Siri, Writing Tools, and Image Playground. Ends ChatGPT's exclusive integration position on Apple platforms. Xcode 27 also integrates Anthropic coding agents natively alongside Google's and OpenAI's. Big default-assistant distribution opening for Claude on ~2B Apple devices; nothing user-facing until the fall OS releases (public betas July).Source: Apple newsroom (apple.com/newsroom, WWDC 2026 developer announcements), MacRumors, TechCrunch · 2026-06-08
MODEL LAUNCH (2026-05-28): **Claude Opus 4.8** shipped as Anthropic's new flagship. Anthropic frames it as 'a more effective collaborator' with notably improved judgment in agent scenarios and meaningful gains across coding, agentic, and reasoning tasks (per third-party coverage, ~4x less likely than Opus 4.7 to let code flaws pass). Two practical changes for users: (1) **effort control** on claude.ai and Cowork -- higher effort makes Claude think more frequently and deeply, lower effort prioritizes speed and rate-limit efficiency; 4.8 defaults to high effort. (2) **Fast mode** for Opus 4.8 runs at 2.5x speed and is now 3x cheaper than fast mode on previous models. API pricing unchanged at $5/$25 per 1M (standard) / $10/$50 (fast). Vendor-cited benchmarks span Terminal-Bench 2.1, OSWorld-Verified, CursorBench, Legal Agent Benchmark, Online-Mind2Web (84%), and Finance Agent v2 -- specific scores are shown only in vendor charts at launch, so third-party verification is pending. New recommended API model id: claude-opus-4-8.Source: Anthropic news (anthropic.com/news/claude-opus-4-8), Axios, MacRumors · 2026-05-28
UPCOMING (surfaced 2026-05-06 at Code with Claude; not yet GA as of this sweep): **Orbit** -- a proactive assistant layer for Claude / Claude Code / Claude Cowork that syncs Gmail, Slack, GitHub, Calendar, Drive, and Figma to deliver opt-in, time-zone-aware personalized briefings with actionable insights (aimed at developers, designers, PMs). As of late May 2026 it exists only as a settings-panel toggle in staging -- no public rollout or firm ship date. Real product (not a rumor), but PRE-LAUNCH on availability; watch for a GA announcementSource: TestingCatalog (Anthropic Orbit), InfoQ (Code with Claude 2026) · 2026-05-06
PARTNERSHIP (2026-05-14): PwC announced an **expanded strategic alliance** to deploy Claude (Code + Cowork + full product suite) across PwC US first, scaling to PwC's global workforce. Headline metrics from Anthropic's launch post: **30,000 PwC professionals to be trained and certified on Claude**, plus a joint Center of Excellence for industry-specific solutions. Dario Amodei pull-quote: 'Insurance underwriting that took 10 weeks now takes 10 days. Security work that took hours now takes minutes.' Advocate Health is the first co-named flagship deployment (167K teammates). Material because (a) it puts a Big 4 firm fully on Claude as the reference frontier model, (b) creates a ~30K-trained labor base evangelizing Claude inside Fortune 500 audits / advisory engagements, (c) competitive pressure on OpenAI Deployment Company (5/11 spin-up) which is targeting the same enterprise-services layer. Distinct event from the same-day Gates Foundation partnership; both were posted to Anthropic newsroom on 5/14.Source: Anthropic news (anthropic.com/news/pwc-expanded-partnership) · 2026-05-14
PARTNERSHIP (2026-05-14): Anthropic + Gates Foundation announced a 4-year, $200M partnership -- approximately half grant funding from the Gates Foundation, half Claude credits + Anthropic technical staff time. Program portfolio: **global health** (polio, HPV vaccines, eclampsia/preeclampsia), **education** (K-12 US + sub-Saharan Africa + India: math tutoring, college advising, curriculum design + benchmark development), **African-language data collection**, **life sciences** (vaccines + therapies), **economic mobility**. Distinct from a standard customer engagement -- philanthropic + product-development partnership with Anthropic technical staff embedded. Material because it positions Claude as the foundation's frontier-model partner of choice over OpenAI / Google / Meta. Practical implication for buyers: nothing direct, but signals Anthropic's continued investment in mission-aligned partnerships that fund model + safety improvements upstream.Source: Anthropic news (anthropic.com/news/gates-foundation-partnership), Gates Foundation co-announcement (gatesfoundation.org), Reuters, PYMNTS · 2026-05-14
PRODUCT (2026-05-13): Anthropic launched 'Claude for Small Business' -- a packaged offering inside Claude Cowork that bundles 15 ready-to-run agentic workflows + 15 repeatable skills across finance, operations, sales, marketing, HR, and customer service. First-party integrations: Intuit QuickBooks, PayPal, HubSpot, Canva, Docusign, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365. Mechanics: toggle Claude for Small Business inside Claude Cowork, connect existing tools, pick a job -- Claude does the work, human approves before anything sends/posts/pays. Anthropic also launched the 'Claude SMB Tour' -- 10-city free AI fluency training kicking off 2026-05-14 in Chicago, then Tulsa / Dallas / Newark / Baton Rouge / Birmingham / SLC / Baltimore / San Jose / Indianapolis; attendees get a one-month Claude Max subscription. PRICING NOT DISCLOSED in the launch post -- no per-seat number, no flat fee, no tier delta vs. Teams ($25-30/seat) or Enterprise published. Target framing: '44% of U.S. GDP / nearly half the private-sector workforce' has lagged AI adoption. First Anthropic SKU explicitly aimed at SMB segment.Source: Anthropic news (anthropic.com/news/claude-for-small-business), TechCrunch coverage · 2026-05-13
PRODUCT + CAPACITY (2026-05-06 Code with Claude SF keynote): Anthropic announced a SpaceX compute partnership at Colossus 1 (300+ MW, 220,000+ NVIDIA GPUs, online 'within the month'). Concurrent product changes shipped TODAY: (a) DOUBLED Claude Code 5-hour rate limits for Pro / Max / Team / seat-based Enterprise plans, (b) REMOVED peak-hours reduction for Pro and Max (peak-hours throttling no longer applies), (c) RAISED API rate limits for Opus models (Opus 4.7 + Opus 4.6 throughput improved). Plus Claude Managed Agents shipped: 'Dreaming' (research preview -- agents review past sessions for self-improvement patterns), 'Outcomes' (public beta -- rubric-graded task success, lifted up to 10 points in tests), and 'Multiagent Orchestration' (public beta -- lead-agent delegates to subagents, e.g. Haiku lead with Opus subagents). Practical impact: existing Pro / Max users see materially more headroom on Claude Code overnight. NOTE: Sonnet 4.8 / Jupiter / Cardinal / KAIROS / Cowork / Undercover Mode -- speculated from the 2026-03-31 source-map leak -- did NOT ship at this keynote. Models page still lists Opus 4.7 / Sonnet 4.6 / Haiku 4.5 as the current trioSource: Anthropic news (anthropic.com/news/higher-limits-spacex), Anthropic Managed Agents (claude.com/blog/new-in-claude-managed-agents), Simon Willison live blog, TheNewStack · 2026-05-06
SECURITY (CVE-2026-41686, NVD-published 2026-05-04, GHSA-p7fg-763f-g4gf): Anthropic TypeScript SDK (`@anthropic-ai/sdk`) `BetaLocalFilesystemMemoryTool` writes memory files with mode 0o666 (world-readable) and directories with mode 0o777 (world-readable + writable). On shared hosts a local attacker can read persisted agent state; in containers with permissive umasks (typical Docker base images) an attacker with container access can poison memory to steer subsequent model behavior. Affects versions 0.79.0 through 0.91.0. **Fix: upgrade to >= 0.91.1**. CVSS 4.8 (moderate). CWE-732 Incorrect Permission Assignment. Reported by lucasfutures, disclosed 2026-04-24Source: GitHub Security Advisory (github.com/anthropics/anthropic-sdk-typescript/security/advisories/GHSA-p7fg-763f-g4gf), NVD CVE-2026-41686 · 2026-05-04
PRODUCT (2026-04-28): Anthropic launched Claude for Creative Work with 9 first-party connectors -- Ableton (Live + Push), Adobe Creative Cloud (Photoshop / Premiere / Express via 'Adobe for creativity'), Affinity by Canva, Autodesk Fusion, Blender, Resolume Arena, Resolume Wire, SketchUp, and Splice. The Blender connector is built on MCP and is explicitly accessible to other LLMs -- not Claude-only. Educational pilots also announced with RISD, Ringling, and Goldsmiths. Tier requirements not specified at launch. This is Anthropic's biggest creative-pro market push to date and pairs naturally with the Opus 4.7 launch on 4/16 (vision quality required for visual workflows)Source: Anthropic news (anthropic.com/news/claude-for-creative-work), 9to5mac, Adobe blog · 2026-04-28
POLICY (2026-04-04, enforced 2026-04-10): Anthropic excluded third-party agent harnesses (OpenClaw cited specifically) from Claude Pro and Max flat-rate plans. Routing Pro/Max via OpenClaw, Claude-on-Cline, or similar frameworks now triggers separate pay-as-you-go 'extra usage' billing rather than the flat plan rate. ~135K OpenClaw instances were impacted at the time of the change. Anthropic temporarily banned OpenClaw's creator from the platform on 2026-04-10 and stated subscriptions 'weren't built to handle the usage patterns' of harnesses that 'run continuous reasoning loops, automatically repeat or retry tasks, and tie into a lot of other third-party tools.' If you run agentic workloads on Claude, expect the API path to be the only viable model going forwardSource: TechCrunch (techcrunch.com/2026/04/10/anthropic-temporarily-banned-openclaws-creator-from-accessing-claude/), The Next Web, PYMNTS · 2026-04-10
ENTERPRISE PRICING (2026-04-16): Anthropic dropped Claude Enterprise's bundled-token model. Plan moved from ~$200/seat with discounted token allotment to $20/seat base + standard API rates with no token allotment and no usage cap. Customary 10-15% enterprise API discounts also pulled. Heavy users see 2-3x bill increases. Rolling out to enterprises with 150+ seats first. Material for any team evaluating Claude as their primary AI provider at scale -- confirm finance modeling against the new structure before committing seat countsSource: The Register (theregister.com/2026/04/16/anthropic_ejects_bundled_tokens_enterprise/), The Information, PYMNTS · 2026-04-16
Claude Haiku 3 (claude-3-haiku-20240307) RETIRED 2026-04-20 -- deprecated -> retired flip confirmed on Anthropic's deprecations page (verified 2026-04-24). If your API code still targets the 2024 Haiku snapshot, requests are now failing -- migrate to claude-haiku-4-5-20251001Source: Anthropic model deprecations page · 2026-04
Claude Sonnet 4 (claude-sonnet-4-20250514) and Claude Opus 4 (claude-opus-4-20250514) RETIRED 2026-06-15 -- deprecated -> retired flip confirmed on Anthropic's deprecations page (verified 2026-06-15; the page now lists both as 'Retired' and the history note reads 'These models were retired June 15, 2026'). Announced 2026-04-14. If your product still targets those specific snapshots, requests are now failing -- migrate to Sonnet 4.6 (`claude-sonnet-4-6`) or **Opus 5 (`claude-opus-5`) -- as of the 2026-07-24 launch, Anthropic's docs name Opus 5, not Opus 4.8, as the recommended Opus replacement**. NOTE: the SEPARATE programmatic-billing change once slated for the same day (Agent SDK / `claude -p` / GitHub Actions onto a metered credit pool) was PAUSED before it shipped -- 'nothing changes for now' -- see claude-code.ts. FOLLOW-ON, NOW DONE: Claude Opus 4.1 (claude-opus-4-1-20250805) was deprecated 2026-06-05 and **retired on schedule 2026-08-05** -- requests to it now error; see the retirement entry at the top of this section for the migration-target discrepancy in Anthropic's own docsSource: Anthropic model deprecations page (platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/model-deprecations) · 2026-06
Free tier rate limits feel aggressive -- heavy users get throttled within a few conversationsSource: Reddit r/ClaudeAI · 2026-03
Occasionally refuses benign creative writing requests due to safety filtersSource: Reddit r/ClaudeAI · 2026-02
SUPERSEDED (2026-06-09): the April-era 'Mythos Preview is gated and will not be generally available' framing no longer holds -- Fable 5 brings Mythos-class capability to the public tier (with safety fallbacks), while Mythos 5 replaces Mythos Preview inside Project Glasswing (expanded to ~150 orgs as of 2026-06-02). See the claude-mythos page for the gated-track detailSource: Anthropic news (anthropic.com/news/claude-fable-5-mythos-5) · 2026-06-09
Opus 4.7 uses an updated tokenizer -- input tokens may increase roughly 1.0-1.35x depending on content type, slightly raising per-request cost even though the published per-token rate is unchangedSource: Anthropic release notes · 2026-04
Project Deal published 2026-04-25 (anthropic.com/features/project-deal, with TechCrunch + PYMNTS + Legal IT Insider analysis): Anthropic ran a one-week internal marketplace where Claude agents bought, sold, and negotiated on behalf of SF-office employees with no human-in-the-loop. 186 deals closed at ~$4K total volume. Headline finding for Claude API buyers: participants assigned Opus 4.5 got measurably better economic outcomes than those on Haiku 4.5 -- and Haiku-assigned users didn't notice they were losing. Practical takeaway: in agentic workflows where Claude transacts on a user's behalf, model-tier selection has measurable downstream economic cost, not just latency or quality. Treat this as a public signal that Anthropic is moving toward productized agent-as-representative use casesSource: anthropic.com/features/project-deal, TechCrunch, PYMNTS · 2026-04-25
Anthropic published an explicit ad-free commitment ('Claude is a space to think', 2026-02-04) -- but the differentiation matters now because OpenAI began rolling ads to ChatGPT Free + Go tiers in Feb 2026 (Plus/Pro/Business/Enterprise still ad-free) and Google AI Overviews already carry ad placements. Anthropic's verbatim language: no sponsored links adjacent to conversations, no advertiser-influenced responses, no third-party product placements. Claude's monetization stays enterprise + subscription only. Practically relevant for B2B / regulated / trust-sensitive deployments (legal, healthcare, finance, research) where ad-incentive contamination in outputs is a deal-breakerSource: anthropic.com/news/claude-is-a-space-to-think (2026-02-04), openai.com/index/testing-ads-in-chatgpt, Axios · 2026-02-04

Best for

Writers, analysts, developers, and anyone who values quality of output over quantity of features. If you care about how good the actual text is, Claude is the best.

Not for

People who want an all-in-one platform with image generation, plugins, and browsing built in. ChatGPT's ecosystem is bigger.

Our Verdict

Claude is the LLM you pick when quality matters more than features, and the Claude 5.5 family (Opus 5.5 on 2026-09-22, Sonnet 5.5 on 2026-09-28) is the strongest version of that argument yet. Opus 5.5 does Fable 5.1-level work at $4/$20 with $0.20 cache reads -- 40% cheaper than Opus 5 on typical workloads by Anthropic's measurement -- and leads its own table on Terminal-Bench 4.0, FrontierCode, CursorBench and GDPval-AA, though Anthropic is unusually candid that the real-world gap to Fable 5.1 is narrower than the numbers. Sonnet 5.5 is the bigger practical shift for most people: the $2/$10 model now posts 70.6% on Terminal-Bench 4.0 where Sonnet 5 managed 10.3%, and it does it with fewer tokens and faster. The catch is the safeguard regime that now reaches down to Opus and, for cyber, to Sonnet: most security work is re-routed to older models unless you are verified, and thinking cannot be disabled on Opus 5.5. Fable 5.1 stays the top model at $10/$50 for the hardest long-horizon work; for everything else the 5.5 pair is the better buy. Scores held at 8.5 pending third-party verification of the vendor table.

Sources

Claude pricing: Free, Pro, Max $100, Ultra $200 (accessed 2026-11-05)
Claude Help Center: What is the Ultra plan? (Max 20x renamed; modified 2026-10-30) (accessed 2026-11-05)
Claude Help Center: What is the Max plan? (accessed 2026-11-05)
Claude: Introducing Personal Finance in Claude (2026-11-05) (accessed 2026-11-05)
Claude: More visibility and control over Claude Enterprise for security teams (2026-11-05) (accessed 2026-11-05)
Claude: Make long-running agents faster with message threads (2026-11-02) (accessed 2026-11-05)
Claude: New agents and products on Claude Marketplace (2026-11-04) (accessed 2026-11-05)
Anthropic docs: Fast mode -- Opus 4.8 fast mode deprecated, removed 2026-11-30; Opus 5.5 $8/$40, Opus 5 and 4.8 $10/$50 (accessed 2026-11-02)
Anthropic docs: Model deprecations (claude-opus-4-8 Active, not sooner than May 28, 2027) (accessed 2026-11-02)
Claude: Introducing Claude Duet, research preview in Pro and Max (2026-10-21) (accessed 2026-10-29)
Claude: Claude Duet product page (US, Pro and Max, powered by Opus 5.5) (accessed 2026-10-29)
Claude: Claude Cowork and chat come together for Enterprise (2026-10-23) (accessed 2026-10-29)
Claude: Claude Platform is now available on Google Cloud, Anthropic managed (2026-10-22) (accessed 2026-10-29)
Anthropic: S-1 filed with the SEC for proposed IPO, Nasdaq ANT (2026-10-26) (accessed 2026-10-29)
Anthropic: Expanding our partnership with GSA, 40% government discount (2026-10-27) (accessed 2026-10-29)
Anthropic: Donating Agent Skills to the Agentic AI Foundation (2026-10-22) (accessed 2026-10-29)
Anthropic: Introducing Claude Haiku 5.5 (2026-10-07) -- $0.10/$0.50 under 100K, adjustable effort, Sonnet 5.5 cache reads $0.10, Max/Team API credits (accessed 2026-10-12)
Claude Platform docs: Pricing -- Haiku 5.5 short/long rows, batch, cache multipliers (accessed 2026-10-12)
Claude Platform docs: Models overview -- claude-haiku-5-5 platform IDs (accessed 2026-10-12)
Anthropic: 2026 Usage Policy update (2026-10-08, effective 2026-11-12) (accessed 2026-10-12)
Anthropic: Introducing the Anthropic Cyber Mission (2026-10-08) -- CIDP + OSS Scanner (accessed 2026-10-12)
Anthropic: Expanding the Cyber Verification Program -- Defense / Red Team / Specialized tiers, Opus 5.5 + Sonnet 5.5 + Mythos 5.1 in every tier, Glasswing folded in (2026-10-06) (accessed 2026-10-06)
Anthropic: Introducing Claude Sonnet 5.5 (2026-09-28) -- $2/$10 unchanged, up to 30% cheaper per task, Terminal-Bench 4.0 70.6%, first Sonnet with cyber safeguards (accessed 2026-09-28)
Anthropic: Introducing Claude Opus 5.5 (2026-09-22) -- $4/$20, cache reads $0.20, fast mode $8/$40, Fable-class safeguards, vendor benchmark table (accessed 2026-09-28)
Claude Platform docs: Pricing -- Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5.5 rows, 0.05x cache-read footnote, fast-mode table (fetched 2026-09-28) (accessed 2026-09-28)
Claude Platform docs: Models overview -- claude-opus-5-5 / claude-sonnet-5-5 IDs, 1M context, Jun 2026 cutoffs, Bedrock/Vertex/Foundry IDs (fetched 2026-09-28) (accessed 2026-09-28)
Anthropic: Introducing the Life Sciences Verification Program -- Standard Use and High-risk Use grants for Mythos 5.1, Opus 5, Sonnet 5 (2026-09-17) (accessed 2026-09-17)
Anthropic: Expanding our support for scientists -- 10,000-seat team plan, standard free, premium $15/mo, AI for Science up to $50K (2026-08-27) (accessed 2026-09-17)
Anthropic: Introducing Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5.1 (2026-09-01) -- same model, different safeguards; 25-45% cheaper via cache reads only (accessed 2026-09-05)
Anthropic pricing docs: Fable 5.1 / Mythos 5.1 rate card -- $10/$50 base unchanged, cache hits $0.25/MTok at a 0.025x multiplier (verified 2026-09-05) (accessed 2026-09-05)
GitHub Changelog: Claude Fable 5.1 generally available in GitHub Copilot -- OFF by default, requires data retention (2026-09-01) (accessed 2026-09-05)
Anthropic pricing docs: Sonnet 5 $2/$10 is now the standard price -- the Sept 1 rise to $3/$15 will not occur (verified 2026-08-31) (accessed 2026-08-31)
GitHub Changelog: Global model policy GA -- Fable 5 excluded by default (2026-08-26) (accessed 2026-08-28)
Anthropic: Model Hardware Standard research preview (2026-08-27) (accessed 2026-08-28)
Anthropic: How Claude's text watermark works (2026-08-14) -- SynthID-Text, applied globally, detection API not yet shipped (accessed 2026-08-17)
Anthropic: Claude Platform API release notes -- legacy Workbench + /v1/experimental prompt-tools endpoints retire 2026-08-17 (accessed 2026-08-17)
Anthropic: Improving Fable 5's biology safeguards -- ~85% fewer biology fallbacks (2026-08-07) (accessed 2026-08-10)
Anthropic: Claude Platform release notes (2026-08-05 -- Opus 4.1 retirement executed + inference hooks beta) (accessed 2026-08-06)
Anthropic: Model deprecations ledger (Opus 4.1 listed Retired, migration table maps to claude-opus-4-8) (accessed 2026-08-06)
OpenAI: Third-party cyber evaluations involving OpenAI models (2026-08-04, cross-lab confirmation of the Irregular incident) (accessed 2026-08-04)
TechCrunch: Your Claude shared chats and Artifacts may have ended up on Google (2026-07-27) (accessed 2026-07-29)
Anthropic: Introducing Claude Opus 5 (2026-07-24) -- $5/$25, default on Max, comparative benchmarks only (accessed 2026-07-29)
Dawn: Fable 5 added to Max/Team Premium at 50% of usage limits (2026-07-18) (accessed 2026-07-19)
XenoSpectrum: Fable 5 stays in Max beyond July 20; Pro one-time $100 credit (claim 7/20-8/2, expires 9/17) (accessed 2026-07-22)
TechTimes: Anthropic Fable 5 plan split, credit terms (2026-07-18) (accessed 2026-07-22)
Anthropic: Claude for Teachers (2026-07-14) (accessed 2026-07-18)
BleepingComputer: Fable 5 stays on paid plans until July 19 (third extension) (accessed 2026-07-18)
Anthropic: Claude Science AI workbench (2026-06-30) (accessed 2026-07-05)
Anthropic: Redeploying Fable 5 (restored 2026-07-01 after controls lifted 2026-06-30) (accessed 2026-07-04)
Anthropic: Introducing Claude Sonnet 5 (2026-06-30) (accessed 2026-07-04)
Anthropic: Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 (2026-06-12) (accessed 2026-06-18)
CNBC: Anthropic disables access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 to comply with government directive (2026-06-12) (accessed 2026-06-18)
CNBC: Anthropic to meet with Trump administration over Mythos dispute (2026-06-15) (accessed 2026-06-18)
Anthropic: Introducing Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5 (2026-06-09) (accessed 2026-06-09)
TechCrunch: Anthropic releases Claude Fable 5 (accessed 2026-06-09)
Apple newsroom: WWDC 2026 intelligence frameworks (Extensions / LanguageModel protocol) (accessed 2026-06-09)
Anthropic: Introducing Claude Opus 4.8 (2026-05-28) (accessed 2026-06-02)
Anthropic: Claude for Small Business (2026-05-13) (accessed 2026-05-13)
GitHub Security Advisory: GHSA-p7fg-763f-g4gf (CVE-2026-41686, 2026-05-04) (accessed 2026-05-05)
Anthropic: Project Deal (2026-04-25) (accessed 2026-04-27)
TechCrunch: Anthropic created a test marketplace for agent-on-agent commerce (accessed 2026-04-27)
Anthropic: Claude is a space to think (ad-free policy, 2026-02-04) (accessed 2026-04-27)
Anthropic: Introducing Claude Opus 4.7 (accessed 2026-04-16)
CNBC: Anthropic rolls out Claude Opus 4.7 (accessed 2026-04-16)
Axios: Opus 4.7 trails unreleased Mythos (accessed 2026-04-16)
Claude Mythos Preview / Project Glasswing (accessed 2026-04-16)
LMSYS Chatbot Arena rankings (accessed 2026-04-16)
Hands-on testing (Opus 4.7 via claude.ai and API) (accessed 2026-04-16)

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Alternatives to Claude (Anthropic)

Claude Mythos 5.1

**From 2026-10-06 Mythos 5.1 is included in every tier of Anthropic's expanded Cyber Verification Program, and existing Project Glasswing members move into its Specialized Access tier without reapproval -- with the first disclosed Glasswing numbers: at least 129,000 verified vulnerabilities found April-July 2026, more than 33,000 rated critical or high.** Anthropic's trusted-access frontier model. **Mythos 5.1 launched 2026-09-01** alongside Fable 5.1, and Anthropic now states outright that they are **the same model with different safeguards** -- the 5.1-cycle gap is 60.9% vs 55.8% on Terminal-Bench 4.0, which Anthropic attributes to safeguard interventions rather than capability and expects to shrink. Originally launched June 9, 2026 alongside Claude Fable 5. Suspended June 12 by a US export-control order, then PARTIALLY RESTORED July 1, 2026 (US government lifted controls June 30): Mythos 5 is back for a set of US organizations with government approval, while Anthropic works to re-expand the broader Glasswing program. Public Fable 5 returned globally the same day. Gated to Project Glasswing orgs + select biology researchers.

6.5/10

From Invite only

The most capable Anthropic model availab...73% success rate on expert-level Capture...

Updated 2026-10-06

Gemini (Google)

**Nov 5: Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash went GA in the Gemini API with 15-second video at about $0.07 per second for 720p, and 15-second clips are rolling out in the Gemini app for Google AI Ultra. Nov 2: gemini-2.5-pro and gemini-2.5-flash left the AI Studio model picker, and from Dec 1 their API calls route to Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite at those models' rates.** **Oct 29: the Gemini app can now generate, preview and edit documents, PDFs, slide decks, spreadsheets, Markdown and code right inside the chat for all users (PDF on web and mobile, the other formats on web only). Oct 30: the Computer Use tool went generally available in the Gemini API across the Interactions and GenerateContent APIs.** **Gemini 4 Carbon was announced on 2026-10-28 as Google's strongest model, but it is not generally available yet: access starts this week for a subset of cyber defenders through the Fairwind Program, and Google says developers, businesses and consumers get it later. When it opens it carries Argon's intro price of $2 / $10 per 1M tokens, rising to $4 / $20 after the intro period. Google reports it #1 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5.0 at 59.** **Gemini 4 Argon went generally available on 2026-10-13: in the Gemini API (paid tier only), AI Studio, Gemini for business and GitHub Copilot, in the Gemini app and AI Mode in Search for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers, and in Google Antigravity for Ultra. The API rate card prices it at $2 input / $10 output per 1M tokens with $0.10 implicit-cache reads through November 30, 2026, doubling to $4 / $20 / $0.20 on December 1; there is no free tier and no explicit caching.** Google calls it its flagship reasoning model, with a 1M-token unified input-output limit, #1 on the Vals Index, 87% on the ERQA embodied-reasoning benchmark and 0.7% attack success on Gray Swan prompt injection, alongside the 9/30 numbers (77.9% DeepSWE v1.1, 51.3% AutomationBench, 91.7% LVBench, 68% CWE-bench v1) -- all vendor-reported. Earlier in October: Gemini 3.7 Flash and 3.5 Flash were retired from AI Studio (10/08) with API calls auto-routed to 3.8 Flash and 3.6 Flash, Nano Banana 2.1 went GA (10/06) and SynthID Detector opened to everyone in English (10/07). Late September in the Gemini app: **skills replace Gems** (9/30; slash-command instructions with reference files, Gems removed from November 2026 for personal accounts), **Guided Vision in Gemini Live** for blind and low-vision users on Android (10/01), and the 9/23-9/24 wave still stands: Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS and Flash-Lite TTS with voice design at $0.50/$9.00 and $0.50/$6.00 per 1M (doubling 2027-01-01), Gemini 3.8 Live with Live Avatar in Gemini Enterprise, free 1080p Omni 1.1 video in Google Vids. Googlebook was scheduled to reach shelves 10/04 (shipment not yet vendor-confirmed).

8.3/10

Free tierFrom $2 / $10

Gemini 4 Argon (GA 2026-10-13) puts a fr...2 million token context window is the la...

Updated 2026-11-05

Grok

**Nov 2: the grok-imagine-image-quality API slug is retired; requests to it, and to grok-imagine-image-pro, which already redirected there, are now answered by grok-imagine-image-2.0 at low quality, which xAI prices $0.01 per image below the old model at every resolution ($0.04 / $0.05 / $0.06 at 1K / 1.5K / 2K).** **The X Subscription (2026-10-12) folds Grok, Grok Bot, Cursor and X Premium into one plan: Free, Plus $8, Premium $30 (what SuperGrok, Cursor Pro and X Premium+ cost $90 for combined), Super $100 and Ultra $200 a month, with one weekly-refreshing usage pool shared across Grok and Cursor; the old SuperGrok, Cursor and X Premium plans are closed to new sign-ups.** **Team Bots launched 2026-09-28 in public beta on Teams and Enterprise plans** -- shared Grok Bots built around a role, with team context (files, instructions, skills), plugins (Salesforce, Notion, GitHub), credentials for APIs without a plugin, and memories, where the bot is shared but each person's conversations and memories stay private; each Team Bot gets its own Slack handle. SpaceXAI runs one per major sales account, and its 9/22 case study says the merged SpaceXAI + Cursor support desk absorbed a 175% ticket increase on Grok Bot with no new hires at $0.20-$0.30 per resolution. **Grok 4.7 (9/21)** remains the flagship at $2/$6 per 1M with chart-only benchmarks; Grok Voice Transcribe 2.0 and the corrected $15/1M-character TTS price stand.

7.5/10

Free tierFrom $0

Real-time access to X/Twitter data is ge...Grok 4.7 (2026-09-21) is a genuine front...

Updated 2026-11-02

Muse Spark + Muse Wonder (Meta)

**Nov 5: the Muse app gained real-time voice conversations and expressive avatars (US first, on mobile, web and Mac, with hundreds of voices); voice is coming to Meta's AI Glasses and Muse Charm.** Meta Superintelligence Labs' model family, now four lines deep: **Muse Wonder** (2026-10-12, frontier, $4/$20 per 1M on the Meta Model API; Wonder Full only in Muse Code subscriptions), **Muse Spark 1.3** (2026-09-02, $1.25/$4.25, or $0.10/$0.20 in Contributor mode if Meta may train on your content), **Muse Spark Open** (2026-10-15, 816B/42B-active open weights, 1M context, runs on two Mac Studios with M5 Ultra) and **Muse Glimmer** (2026-08-10, 30B, Apache 2.0, built for local agents). Consumers get it through **Muse**, Meta's personal-agent app (2026-09-08): free with limits, Power $20/mo, Maximum $100/mo

8.8/10

Free tierFrom $0

Muse Wonder gives Meta a genuine frontie...Muse Spark 1.3 is one of the cheapest ca...

Updated 2026-11-05

GPT-Rosalind (OpenAI)

**Since 2026-10-15 US university labs can apply for the Rosalind Academic Plan: up to 30 ChatGPT Business Standard seats free for up to 12 months, with GPT-Rosalind and Rosalind Workbench behind trusted-access approval.** OpenAI's first domain-specific model -- life sciences, drug discovery, translational medicine. Launched 2026-04-16 as a Trusted Access research preview. Launch partners: Amgen, Moderna, Allen Institute, Thermo Fisher. Paired with a Life Sciences Codex plugin (50+ scientific tool integrations)

6.8/10

From $0

Since 2026-10-15 a vetted US university ...OpenAI's first named vertical/domain-spe...

Updated 2026-10-15

GPT-6 Cyber / GPT-5.6 Cyber (OpenAI)

**Nov 5: OpenAI launched GPT-6 Cyber -- the 'upcoming cyber model' behind the 948 Linux exploits -- and classifies it Critical for cybersecurity (GPT-5.6 Cyber was High). It scores 48.5% on ExploitGym versus 32.1% for GPT-5.6 Cyber, costs $20/$100 per 1M tokens with a 1.05M-token context, and is available through the API and Codex to a select group of approved Daybreak Red customers first; GPT-5.6 Cyber opens to every Daybreak Red customer.** **Nov 4: GPT-5.6 Cyber reached AWS GovCloud (US-East) through Daybreak Red on Amazon Bedrock for approved government customers, and OpenAI reported that an upcoming cyber model found and exploited 948 Linux local privilege escalation bugs in one mid-October run for $1,213,430 in API credits.** **GPT-5.4-Cyber reached its API removal date on 2026-10-01: the gpt-5.4-cyber model page now returns Not found while gpt-5.6-cyber stays live (checked 2026-10-02; OpenAI's deprecations doc had not yet moved the row to Past Deprecations). Its replacement is `gpt-5.6-cyber`**, an alias for OpenAI's most advanced purpose-trained cyber models, gated behind the Daybreak program and priced at $12.50/$75 per 1M (first published price for any OpenAI cyber model). Original page: OpenAI's defensive-cybersecurity variant of GPT-5.4, launched 2026-04-16. Lowered refusal boundary for security-research tasks and native binary reverse-engineering. Access gated via Trusted Access for Cyber (TAC) program -- thousands of verified defenders, hundreds of teams, no public pricing. On **2026-08-17 OpenAI published its first dedicated post on the Hugging Face incident**, conceding it 'underestimated the real-world cyber capabilities of our AI models' and confirming it now releases cyber capabilities only to trusted defenders. **On 2026-09-01 OpenAI confirmed GPT-6 Astra meets the Critical cyber threshold -- the first model it has ever designated at that level -- and on 2026-09-03 committed $1B to Daybreak for Frontline Defenders**

7.2/10

From $20 / $100

Directly competes with Claude Mythos Pre...Lowered refusal boundary on defensive-se...

Updated 2026-11-05

Microsoft MAI-Thinking-1

**Nov 2026: public preview on Foundry since 2026-08-12, priced at $2 / $8 per 1M tokens.** Microsoft's first in-house reasoning model -- announced 2026-06-02 at Build as the flagship of seven new MAI models. 35B-active / ~1T-total sparse Mixture-of-Experts, 256K context. AIME 2025 97.0%, 52.8% on SWE-Bench Pro, and preferred over Claude Sonnet 4.6 in blind human side-by-sides. Foundry is the only confirmed route; Baseten, Fireworks and OpenRouter were announced as coming

7.5/10

From $2.00 / $8.00 per 1M tokens

Microsoft's first in-house frontier-clas...Strong published reasoning numbers: AIME...

Updated 2026-11-05

Tencent Hy3 / Hy4 preview (formerly Hunyuan)

Tencent Hy (formerly Hunyuan) open-weight MoE family -- Hy4 preview (2026-08-28) is the new flagship at 770B total and 49B active with a 1M-token context, Apache 2.0, at $0.834 in / $2.501 out per 1M tokens on Tencent Cloud TokenHub. Hy3 (GA 2026-07-06; 295B total / 21B active, 256K context, Apache 2.0) remains the budget pick at $0.132 / $0.528. Integrated into Yuanbao, WorkBuddy, CodeBuddy, and ima

8.1/10

Free tierFrom $0

Open weights from a top-3 Chinese tech c...Pricing is aggressive -- Hy3 lists at $0...

Updated 2026-11-02

MiMo (Xiaomi)

Xiaomi's MiMo family. MiMo-V2.6 (2026-09-22) open-sources Pro (1.02T total / 42B active MoE) and Flash (309B / 15B active) under MIT, both natively omnimodal (text, image, video, audio) with 1M context. API prices unchanged from V2.5: Pro $0.435 input / $0.87 output per 1M tokens, Flash $0.14 / $0.28. MiMo-V2.5 TTS and open-source ASR round out the voice stack

8.3/10

Free tierFrom $0

Open weights at the flagship tier: MiMo-...Vendor-reported agent scores put V2.6-Pr...

Updated 2026-10-29