Claude Opus

Opus sits at the top of Anthropic's three-tier model lineup. Since the Claude 3 launch in March 2024, each Opus release has targeted the hardest tasks: multi-step reasoning, complex software engineering across large codebases, long-running agentic work that requires planning and self-correction, and high-stakes professional use cases. Opus trades speed and cost for capability, and is priced accordingly: Opus 4.8 costs $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens at standard rates.

The Claude Opus 4.x generation made agentic coding its defining use case. Claude Opus 4.8, released May 28, 2026, focuses on reliability rather than raw benchmark gains: Anthropic reports it is roughly four times less likely than Opus 4.7 to let flaws in code it has written pass unremarked. It ships alongside a Dynamic Workflows feature in Claude Code that lets a single Opus instance coordinate hundreds of parallel subagents. A Fast mode runs at 2.5x the speed of standard for $10/$50 per million tokens.

For practical model selection: most builders should start with Sonnet 4.6 for everyday coding and analysis tasks, and reach for Opus only when the task genuinely requires stronger complex reasoning, cross-file engineering changes, or higher reliability on long-chain planning. The gap between Sonnet and Opus has narrowed across generations — Sonnet 4.6 outperformed the previous Opus on some coding evaluations — so default to Sonnet and escalate to Opus when results fall short.