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Claude Fable 5.1 vs Claude Opus 5

Claude Fable 5.1 is served by invitation. Its figures below are the live rates, but calls need a workspace grant first; ask us for access before you build on this comparison.

vs

Which one, when

These two match on the structural facts - both handle 1000000-token context, 128000 max output, text plus image in and text out, and the same chat, code, thinking, tools and reasoning flags - so the split is price and control. claude-opus-5 costs half as much on tokens ($5 input and $25 output versus $10 and $50) and lets you turn thinking off, making it the default for mixed or latency-sensitive traffic; claude-fable-5-1 always reasons and cannot disable it, but its cache reads are half the price ($0.25 versus $0.5 per million) and it is the newer build, released 2026-09-01 with a 2026-06 cutoff.

Benchmarks

LeadsAbove averageNo peer higherClaude Fable 5.177 / 77 / 7Claude Opus 5024 / 265 / 26

7 measured on both.

Claude Fable 5.1 Claude Opus 5 other models measured peer average no peer scored higher
Terminal-bench 4.0
no peer scored higher 55.8%
52.3%
BioMysteryBench hard
N/A
49.4%
OSWorld 2.0 partial
77.9%
75.4%
HealthBench Professional
N/A
59.8%
GDPval-AA v2 Elo · 1711-1853 per Anthropic · 2026-09-05
no peer scored higher 1853
1824
Legal Agent Benchmark
N/A
6.7%
Humanity's Last Exam no tools
no peer scored higher 60.9%
56.6%
AutomationBench
no peer scored higher 31.4%
26.9%
LVBench
N/A
75.4%

Vendor-published: Alibaba (Qwen) Anthropic ByteDance DeepSeek Google MiniMax Moonshot OpenAI Tencent Z.ai

Pricing

Claude Fable 5.1 Claude Opus 5 Δ
Input / 1M tokens $10 $5
Output / 1M tokens $50 $25
Cache read / 1M tokens $0.25 $0.5 0.5×
Cache write 1.25x (5m) / 2x (1h) 1.25x (5m) / 2x (1h) -

Rates from the live catalog at build time; each model page carries the current card.

Where they sit - input price per 1M tokens across all 67 chat models on this billing unit (log scale)

Capabilities

Claude Fable 5.1 Claude Opus 5
Tool use yes yes
Thinking control always on configurable
Structured output yes yes
Prompt caching explicit (you mark the prefix) explicit (you mark the prefix)
Cache lifetime 5m default, 1h option 5m default, 1h option
Minimum cached prefix 1024 tokens 1024 tokens

Specs

Claude Fable 5.1 Claude Opus 5
Input modalities text image text image
Output modalities text text
Released 2026-09-01 2026-07-24
Knowledge cutoff 2026-06 2026-05
Context window 1M 1M
Max output 128K 128K
Thinking parameter output_config.effort (thinking is adaptive-only and always on)
  • thinking.type
  • output_config.effort
Accepted values
effort
  • low
  • medium
  • high
  • xhigh
  • max
thinking.type
  • adaptive
  • disabled
effort
  • low
  • medium
  • high
  • xhigh
  • max
Default

thinking always on (adaptive)

effort
  • high

thinking on

effort
  • high (Claude API and Claude Code)

Specs are transcribed from each vendor’s documentation; a row a vendor does not publish is left out rather than inferred. Full sources: Claude Fable 5.1 · Claude Opus 5

Switch between them with one line

Both ids are in every tab below - the highlighted pair of lines is the only edit. Same endpoint, same key, same request shape.

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://synthorai.io/v1",
    api_key="sk-syn-...",
)

resp = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="claude-fable-5-1",
    # model="claude-opus-5",  # uncomment this line, comment the one above
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Summarize this diff"}],
    reasoning_effort="medium",
)
print(resp.choices[0].message.content)

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FAQ

Which is cheaper, Claude Fable 5.1 or Claude Opus 5?

Claude Opus 5 is cheaper on input / 1m tokens ($5 vs $10, 2.0× apart). Other rows may point the other way - the table above carries the full card, and real cost depends on your mix.

Can I A/B test Claude Fable 5.1 against Claude Opus 5 without two integrations?

Yes. Both are served through the same OpenAI-compatible endpoint with one API key - switching is a one-line model-string change, so you can route a fraction of traffic to each and compare bills directly.

Do Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Opus 5 support prompt caching?

Yes - both bill cached reads below their input rate, so warm-prefix workloads cost less than the list rates suggest. The exact cache-read rows are in the pricing table above.

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