Is Claude Fable 5 better than Claude Opus 5.5?

Claude Fable 5 and Claude Opus 5.5 (max) are neck and neck on quality (66.6 vs 68.9, within the ±5.4 margin). The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; the two are within the margin of error as of 9 Nov 2026, so check the category scores for your use.

Claude Fable 5 vs Claude Opus 5.5: which is cheaper, and will that change?

Claude Opus 5.5 is cheaper today: $8.00 against $20.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token. No price change has been announced for either.

Is Claude Fable 5 or Claude Opus 5.5 better for coding?

Claude Opus 5.5 scores higher in coding (80 vs 71 on the category index, where 50 is average).

Which is faster, Claude Fable 5 or Claude Opus 5.5?

Claude Opus 5.5 streams ~2× faster (115 vs 55 output tokens per second, Artificial Analysis 7-day median).

Is Claude Fable 5 or Claude Opus 5.5 better for agents and tool use?

They are level in agentic tasks (63 vs 63 on the category index). On APEX-Agents, the top shared agents & tools benchmark, it is 63.6% for Claude Fable 5 against 73.5% for Claude Opus 5.5.

Which is better for long documents?

Both accept 1,000,000 tokens of context.

Which has lower latency?

Claude Fable 5 answers first: 4.3 s against 380.6 s to the first answer token, as Artificial Analysis measures it. Reasoning effort drives most of this: a higher setting thinks longer before it answers.

When was Claude Opus 5.5 released?

Claude Opus 5.5 was released on 22 Sep 2026.

Claude Fable 5 vs Claude Opus 5.5

Full profiles: Claude Fable 5 (Anthropic) and Claude Opus 5.5 (Anthropic): every benchmark, price and rank.

Updated 9 Nov 2026 · Data from 17 sources

As of 9 Nov 2026, Claude Fable 5 and Claude Opus 5.5 are neck and neck on quality (66.6 vs 68.9 on the BenchLeader Index, inside the ±5.4 margin), and Claude Opus 5.5 is 2.5× cheaper at $8.00 vs $20.00 per 1M tokens blended. Choose Fable 5 for reasoning (80 vs 72) and fast first answers (4.3 s vs 380.6 s); choose Opus 5.5 for coding (80 vs 71) and knowledge (74 vs 67), where it also streams ~2× faster.

Key facts (as of 9 Nov 2026)

Claude Fable 5 scores 66.6 on the BenchLeader Index and Claude Opus 5.5 scores 68.9 (BenchLeader, 9 Nov 2026).
Claude Fable 5 costs $20.00 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 9 Nov 2026).
Claude Opus 5.5 costs $8.00 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 9 Nov 2026).
Claude Opus 5.5 streams ~2× faster than Claude Fable 5 (Artificial Analysis, 7-day median, 9 Nov 2026).
Of the 2 benchmarks both models have, Claude Opus 5.5 leads 2 (BenchLeader, 9 Nov 2026).

Claude Fable 5 benchmarks Anthropic

Claude Opus 5.5 benchmarks max Anthropic Add a third model

Which to pick for…

The pick's numbers come first. Category scores on the BenchLeader scale (50 is the average model, 15 points one standard deviation). High confidence means a lead of half a standard deviation or more; under one point is called either.

Use case	Pick	Why	Confidence
Coding	Claude Opus 5.5	80 vs 71 category score	High
Agents & tool use	Either	63 vs 63 category score; APEX-Agents 63.6% vs 73.5%	Either
Reasoning	Claude Fable 5	80 vs 72 category score	High
Knowledge	Claude Opus 5.5	74 vs 67 category score; GDP.pdf 30.6% vs 30.0%	Medium
Chat quality (human preference)	–	Only Claude Fable 5 has an Arena rating (68 category score)	Not comparable
Lowest cost	Claude Opus 5.5	$8.00 vs $20.00 per 1M blended; agentic coding session $0.320 vs $0.800	–
Fastest first answer	Claude Fable 5	4.3 s (Claude Fable 5) vs 380.6 s (Claude Opus 5.5 (max)) to the first answer token	–
High volume on a budget	Neither flagship	A smaller model is usually the better fit: Cheapest good LLMs, Fastest LLMs	–

Key differences

Claude Fable 5 and Claude Opus 5.5 (max) are neck and neck on quality (66.6 vs 68.9, within the ±5.4 margin).
Claude Fable 5 is stronger in agents & tools, human preference, reasoning.
Claude Opus 5.5 (max) is stronger in coding, knowledge, long context, maths, multimodal.
Claude Opus 5.5 (max) is 2.5× cheaper ($8.00 vs $20.00 per 1M blended).
Claude Opus 5.5 (max) streams 2.1× faster (115 vs 55 tokens per second).

At a glance

Spec	Claude Fable 5	Claude Opus 5.5
Developer	Anthropic	Anthropic
Released	9 Jun 2026	22 Sep 2026
Context window (tokens)	1,000,000	1,000,000
Max output (tokens)	–	128,000 (up to 300K on the Message Batches API (beta))
Input types	–	text, image
Reasoning effort settings	–	low, medium, high, xhigh, max
Compared at	Claude Fable 5	Claude Opus 5.5 (max)
Open weights	No	No
Price in / out / cached input per 1M	$10.00 / $50.00 / $1.00	$4.00 / $20.00 / $0.200
API model ID	–	claude-opus-5-5
Where to use it	–	Claude API, Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud, Microsoft Foundry

Limits, availability and announced prices from the vendors' own pages: platform.claude.com (checked 20 Oct 2026). Everything else is from the day's data.

Category by category

Category scores on the BenchLeader scale: 50 is the average evaluated model, 15 points is one standard deviation. A gap under one point is called level.

Category	Claude Fable 5	Claude Opus 5.5 (max)	Leader
Reasoning	80.1	72.3	Claude Fable 5
Coding	70.5	80.4	Claude Opus 5.5
Agents & tools	63.4	62.7	level
Maths	–	74.0	not comparable
Knowledge	66.8	73.7	Claude Opus 5.5
Human preference	67.7	–	not comparable
Multimodal	–	70.3	not comparable
Long context	–	67.1	not comparable

On one chart

Each domain on the index's own scale, where 50 is an average model. Click a domain to see the benchmarks behind it. Pick up to 5 models from the list.

Not drawn, measured for fewer than two of these models: Maths, Instruction following, Long context, Multimodal, Human preference.

ModelIndex

Where sources disagree

Across the 2 benchmarks both have, Claude Fable 5 leads 0, Claude Opus 5.5 leads 2. Every overall index that rates both puts Claude Opus 5.5 ahead.

Overall index	Claude Fable 5	Claude Opus 5.5 (max)	Leader
BenchLeader Index	66.6	68.9	neck and neck
Arena Text	1504†	1506	Claude Opus 5.5

Each publisher runs its own tasks, harnesses and effort settings, so their overall verdicts can differ; BenchLeader reconciles them on one scale. † measured at another effort setting of the same model (the publisher did not test the one compared here).

Price, speed and latency

List prices blended at three input tokens per output token. Per-task prices use the token counts on the methodology page. Cost, tokens and time per benchmark task are measured: Artificial Analysis’ averages over its whole Intelligence Index run.

Measure	Claude Fable 5	Claude Opus 5.5 (max)
Blended price per 1M tokens	$20.00	$8.00
Input / output per 1M	$10.00 / $50.00	$4.00 / $20.00
Cached input per 1M	$1.00	$0.200
Price per task: chat reply	$0.019	$0.0076
Price per task: summarize a 30-page report	$0.150	$0.060
Price per task: code edit	$0.135	$0.054
Price per task: agentic coding session	$0.800	$0.320
Price per task: structured extraction	$0.030	$0.012
Agentic coding session, input mostly cached	$0.395	$0.149
Cost per benchmark task (AA Index)	–	$10.04
Output tokens per task (AA Index)	–	173k
Of which reasoning	–	120k
Time per task (AA Index)	–	25 min
Output speed	55 tok/s	115 tok/s
Time to first answer	4.3 s	380.6 s
Time to a complete answer	–	771.1 s

Each model is compared at its best-ranked reasoning-effort setting. Claude Fable 5 scores 66.6 and takes 4 s to its first answer token; Claude Fable 5 (max) scores 65.3 in 95 s, Claude Fable 5 (high) scores 64.3 in 4 s. Claude Opus 5.5 (max) scores 68.9 and takes 381 s to its first answer token; Claude Opus 5.5 (xhigh) scores 65.5 in 84 s, Claude Opus 5.5 (high) scores 65.4 in 28 s. Higher effort means more thinking before the answer: better scores, longer waits and more tokens billed. How reasoning effort changes scores and cost.

Every benchmark

168 benchmarks, grouped by category; each name links to the board and its leaders. † measured at another effort setting of the same model, shown for reference and not counted as a win.

Metric	Publisher	Claude Fable 5	Claude Opus 5.5 (max)
BenchLeader Index	BenchLeader	66.6	68.9
Agents & tools score	BenchLeader	63.4	62.7
Coding score	BenchLeader	70.5	80.4
Human preference score	BenchLeader	67.7	–
Knowledge score	BenchLeader	66.8	73.7
Reasoning score	BenchLeader	80.1	72.3
Long context score	BenchLeader	–	67.1
Maths score	BenchLeader	–	74.0
Multimodal score	BenchLeader	–	70.3
Blended price $/M	BenchLeader	$20.00	$8.00
Output speed	BenchLeader	55 tok/s	115 tok/s
Time to first answer	BenchLeader	4.3 s	380.6 s
Context window	BenchLeader	1,000,000 tokens	1,000,000 tokens
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	85.9%†	90.6%
SimpleBench	SimpleBench	81.9%†	–
Arena Hard Prompts	Arena (LMArena)	1529†	1530†
LiveBench 2.0 Reasoning	LiveBench	–	92.2%†
LiveBench 1.0 Reasoning	LiveBench	89.7%†	92.2%
GPQA Diamond (AA)	Artificial Analysis	92.6%†	–
Humanity's Last Exam (AA)	Artificial Analysis	55.5%†	61.4%
HLE-Diamond (AA)	Artificial Analysis	–	67.9%
GPQA Diamond (Vals)	Vals AI	93.2%	–
EnigmaEval	Scale AI SEAL	39.3%†	–
Kagi LLM Benchmark	Kagi LLM Benchmark	88.8%	–
ARC-AGI-1	ARC Prize	98.5%†	97.5%
ARC-AGI-2	ARC Prize	89.2%†	91.7%
CritPt	Artificial Analysis	28.6%†	31.7%
CritPt v2 hard subset (AA)	Artificial Analysis	–	68.0%
MysteryMechanism	Vals AI	–	49.5%†
Chess Puzzles	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	47.0%†	67.0%
Mystery Game Puzzles	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	52.0%†	71.0%
LMCA	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	60.3%†	68.2%
DTBench	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	98.4%†	98.9%
ForecastBench	ForecastBench	66.0%†	–
BTF-3	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	13.0%†	–
Coding
SciCode	SciCode	61.0%†	66.9%
WeirdML	WeirdML	91.9%†	–
FrontierCode	Cognition	53.5%	54.6%†

Show all 168 benchmarks

Metric	Publisher	Claude Fable 5	Claude Opus 5.5 (max)
Coding
GSO-Bench	GSO-Bench	78.4%	–
Arena Coding	Arena (LMArena)	1551†	1546†
Arena WebDev	Arena (LMArena)	1625†	1818
LiveBench 2.0 Coding	LiveBench	–	87.1%†
LiveBench 1.0 Coding	LiveBench	86.0%†	89.3%
LiveCodeBench	Vals AI	89.8%	–
IOI	Vals AI	–	95.1%†
SWE-bench (Vals)	Vals AI	95.0%	–
Code Migration	Vals AI	55.1%	66.7%†
Code Migration v1.1	Vals AI	–	81.0%†
ProgramBench	Vals AI	2.0%	18.5%†
SWE-bench Multimodal	Vals AI	–	70.2%†
Vibe Code Bench 1-100	Vals AI	–	30.4%†
Vibe Code Bench v1.1	Vals AI	90.3%	90.3%†
SWE Atlas: Codebase QnA	Scale AI SEAL	39.0%†	–
SWE Atlas: Refactoring	Scale AI SEAL	54.8%†	–
SWE Atlas: Test Writing	Scale AI SEAL	55.6%†	–
MirrorCode	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	63.9%†	78.9%†
Surface Evolver Bench	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	95.0%†	–
DeepSWE v1.1	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	69.7%†	–
CursorBench	Cursor	–	57.8%
ALE-Bench	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	2041.3†	2147.4†
FrontierSWE	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	47.0%†	62.3%
Terminal-Bench 4.0 (AA)	Artificial Analysis	42.4%†	59.6%
Terminal-Bench 2.1 (AA)	Artificial Analysis	84.6%†	–
Startrise Frontend	Startrise	73.8%	71.1%†
GameBench 2 Overall	DuelLab GameBench 2	65.8	87.6†
GameBench 2 by reasoning setting	DuelLab GameBench 2	58.1†	94.8†
Design Arena Website	Design Arena	1292	1325†
FrontierCode 1.1 (AA)	Artificial Analysis	–	52.2%
FrontierCode 2.0 (AA)	Artificial Analysis	–	46.4%
Agents & tools
Terminal-Bench	Terminal-Bench	44.9%†	65.8%
Remote Labor Index	Scale AI / CAIS	16.1%	21.3%†
APEX-Agents	Mercor	63.6%	73.5%
Arena Agent	Arena (LMArena)	7.7†	20
LiveBench Long Agentic	LiveBench	–	72.8%†
LiveBench Browser	LiveBench	–	88.4%†
LiveBench Agentic Coding	LiveBench	62.2%†	71.7%
Terminal-Bench Hard	Artificial Analysis	62.9%†	–
τ²-Bench Telecom (AA)	Artificial Analysis	98.5%†	–
Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals)	Vals AI	80.5%	87.6%†
MCP Atlas	Scale AI SEAL	83.3%	85.4%†
HiL-Bench	Scale AI SEAL	56.3%	59.0%†
τ³-bench Banking	τ²-bench	39.7%†	–
GDPval-AA v2.1, normalised score	Artificial Analysis	–	68.3%
GDPval-AA v2.1	Artificial Analysis	–	1866
τ³-Banking (AA)	Artificial Analysis	38.1%†	–
ITBench SRE (AA)	Artificial Analysis	–	38.2%
Analyst Agent (AA)	Artificial Analysis	48.8%†	56.3%
CUA-bench	Vals AI	–	14.0%
CyberBench	Vals AI	–	55.4%†
Finance Agent v2	Vals AI	56.3%	58.6%†
Finance Agent v2.1	Vals AI	–	67.8%†
Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1.1	Vals AI	–	9.2%†
Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1	Vals AI	11.3%	3.8%†
Legal Research Bench	Vals AI	49.5%	50.5%†
Robo-bench	Vals AI	–	14.6%
SREBench	Vals AI	–	33.6%†
Tax Agent Bench	Vals AI	38.3%	44.5%†
Terminal-Bench 4.0 (Vals)	Vals AI	41.4%	65.2%†
Terminal-Bench Science	Vals AI	15.7%	47.1%†
Time Horizon Index: KSP	Vals AI	–	91.3%†
Web Search Index	Vals AI	46.9%	–
Arena Search	Arena (LMArena)	1229†	1214†
PostTrainBench	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	41.8%†	–
GBAEval	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	74.5%	–
Vending-Bench 2	Andon Labs	4529.9	9235.3†
AutomationBench	Artificial Analysis	54.1%†	69.5%
GDP.pdf (AA)	Artificial Analysis	24.0%†	26.2%
Harvey LAB-AA v1.1	Harvey	–	4.2%
EnterpriseOps-Gym	Artificial Analysis	51.1%†	–
AA-Briefcase v1.1	Artificial Analysis	1535†	1800
GDPx	GDPx by SemiAnalysis	–	12.0%
Design Arena Agentic	Design Arena	1268	1334†
Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 (AA)	Artificial Analysis	–	59.0%
CWE-Bench (AA)	Artificial Analysis	–	58.3%
DeepSec-Bench (AA)	Artificial Analysis	–	26.9%
CyberGym end-to-end (AA)	Artificial Analysis	–	0.8%
FACTS Search	Google	–	88.4%†
Maths
FrontierMath Tiers 1–3	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	87.0%†	91.2%
FrontierMath Tier 4	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	90.2%†	95.0%
OTIS Mock AIME	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	99.7%†	100.0%
ProofBench	Vals AI	95.0%†	100.0%
LiveBench Mathematics	LiveBench	96.0%†	97.1%
Arena Maths	Arena (LMArena)	1521†	1518†
Knowledge
SimpleQA Verified	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	70.7%†	72.2%
LiveBench 2.0 Data Analysis	LiveBench	–	80.3%†
LiveBench Research	LiveBench	–	88.9%†
LiveBench 1.0 Data Analysis	LiveBench	80.5%†	80.3%
AA-Omniscience v1.1	Artificial Analysis	–	48.1
MMLU-Pro	Vals AI	91.5%	–
LegalBench	Vals AI	88.6%	–
CorpFin	Vals AI	71.8%	–
TaxEval	Vals AI	76.9%	–
PRBench Finance	Scale AI SEAL	53.9%	–
PRBench Legal	Scale AI SEAL	52.6%	47.6%†
BioMysteryBench	Vals AI	–	79.3%†
ClaimBench	Vals AI	–	100.0%†
Excel Modeling Benchmark	Vals AI	73.7%	75.9%†
Excel Modeling Benchmark v1.1	Vals AI	–	75.8%†
MedCode	Vals AI	56.1%	49.8%†
MedScribe	Vals AI	88.5%	91.4%†
Public Benefits Bench v1.1	Vals AI	70.4%	70.6%†
EBR-bench	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	39.5%†	71.4%
GDP.pdf	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	30.0%	30.6%
AA-Omniscience v1.1: accuracy	Artificial Analysis	–	65.5%
AA-Omniscience v1.1: non-hallucination	Artificial Analysis	–	49.7%
HealthBench Professional (AA)	OpenAI	–	59.9%
Instruction following
LiveBench Language	LiveBench	90.7%†	86.3%
LiveBench Instruction Following	LiveBench	75.8%†	65.7%
IFBench	Artificial Analysis	63.5%†	–
Arena Instruction Following	Arena (LMArena)	1509†	1519†
Human preference
Arena Text	Arena (LMArena)	1504†	1506†
EQ-Bench 4	EQ-Bench	1313	1340†
Arena Creative Writing	Arena (LMArena)	1501†	1517†
Arena Multi-turn	Arena (LMArena)	1517†	1500†
Arena Longer Queries	Arena (LMArena)	1522†	1520†
Multimodal
Arena Vision	Arena (LMArena)	1326†	1324†
LiveBench Design	LiveBench	–	83.3%†
MMMU-Pro	Artificial Analysis	–	87.7%
MMMU-Pro (Vals)	Vals AI	89.3%	–
MortgageTax	Vals AI	68.9%	–
SAGE	Vals AI	–	91.3%†
Blueprint-Bench 2	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	38.6%	51.2%†
Code2Video-AA	Artificial Analysis	–	1536
AA-3D	Artificial Analysis	–	1202
Long context
AA-LCR v1.1	Artificial Analysis	82.3%†	84.7%
Arena Document	Arena (LMArena)	1500†	–
MLCR	Artificial Analysis	20.6%†	27.8%
Composite
Epoch Capabilities Index	Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub	164.2	168.4†
LiveBench 2.0	LiveBench	–	83.4%†
LiveBench 1.0	LiveBench	83.0%†	83.2%
AA Intelligence Index v5.0	Artificial Analysis	–	59.1
AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2	Artificial Analysis	49.6†	57.6
AA Progress Index v1	Artificial Analysis	329.3†	350
Vals Index	Vals AI	–	70.1†
Vals Finance Index	Vals AI	–	65.3%†
Vals RSI Index	Vals AI	24.3%†	37.3%
Vals Science Index	Vals AI	–	58.6%†
Vals Multimodal Index	Vals AI	74.2%	–
Vals Router Index	Vals AI	–	64.2%†
AA Cyber Index	Artificial Analysis	–	28.7
Safety & honesty
FORTRESS	Scale AI SEAL	–	5.8%

Data as of 2026-11-09. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.

DuelLab GameBench 2, release gb2-20261103-eaea31df94e6 (https://benchmarks.duellab.org/releases/gb2-20261103-eaea31df94e6/), CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Scores mapped to BenchLeader model names; not endorsed by DuelLab.

What changed

9 Nov 2026 Claude Opus 5.5 (max): 2 score revisions.
8 Nov 2026 Claude Opus 5.5 (max): 1 score revision.
5 Nov 2026 Claude Fable 5: 1 score revision.
5 Nov 2026 Claude Opus 5.5 (max): 1 score revision.
4 Nov 2026 Claude Fable 5: 1 score revision.
4 Nov 2026 Claude Opus 5.5 (max): 2 score revisions.
3 Nov 2026 Claude Opus 5.5 (max): 2 score revisions.
31 Oct 2026 Claude Opus 5.5 (max): 1 score revision.
28 Oct 2026 Claude Opus 5.5 (max): 5 new results (AA Intelligence Index v5.0, AA Progress Index v1, HLE-Diamond (AA)…); 3 score revisions; cost per task moved from $5.98/M to $10.04/M (68% up).
25 Oct 2026 Claude Fable 5: BenchLeader Index 67.3 → 66.5.

Rankings: Best LLM overall · Best LLM for coding · Best LLM for agents · Best cheap LLMs