News in Short
- Anthropic has launched Claude Opus 5.5 as the first model in its Claude 5.5 family.
- The model is available from September 22 across Anthropic’s platforms.
- Anthropic claims Opus 5.5 can cost around 40% less than Claude Opus 5.
- A Fast mode offers up to 2.5x faster performance for developers.
- The model targets agentic coding, computer use and knowledge work.
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Claude Haiku 5.5 are coming in the next few weeks.
Anthropic has introduced Claude Opus 5.5 as the first model in its new Claude 5.5 family. The company says the model brings faster performance and lower operating costs compared with Claude Opus 5.
According to Anthropic, Opus 5.5 can deliver similar performance to its high-end Claude Fable 5.1 model across many workloads. The company also claims that the new model needs significantly less compute than its predecessor.
The launch focuses heavily on complex tasks. Anthropic says Claude Opus 5.5 performs particularly well in agentic coding, computer use and knowledge work based on its internal testing.
Claude Opus 5.5 Is 40% Cheaper
One of the biggest changes is the pricing. Anthropic says Claude Opus 5.5 can reduce overall operational costs by around 40% compared with Claude Opus 5 for typical workloads.
The model costs $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens. By comparison, Claude Opus 5 costs $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens. Cache reads are priced at $0.20 per million tokens, which Anthropic says is 60% lower than Opus 5.
This lower cost could make the model more practical for developers handling large workloads. Anthropic also says Opus 5.5 uses substantially fewer tokens when completing complex tasks.
Fast Mode Can Reach 2.5x Speed
Speed is another major change in Claude Opus 5.5. Anthropic says the standard model generates output more than 30% faster than Claude Opus 5.
Developers can also use a separate Fast mode through Claude Code and the Claude Platform. Anthropic claims this mode can deliver up to 2.5x the speed of the standard experience.
Fast mode costs $8 per million input tokens and $40 per million output tokens. Therefore, developers get a faster option when response speed matters more than the standard pricing.
Built for Coding and Complex Work
Anthropic is positioning Claude Opus 5.5 beyond regular chatbot conversations. The company says it leads on several internal tests covering coding, computer use and professional knowledge work.
In one test, Claude Opus 5.5 completed a software migration involving around 680,000 lines of code in less than a day. Anthropic also says it achieved page-load performance across 39 of 40 pages in a web application.
The company says the model avoided unwanted behavioural changes that appeared with the previous model during the same testing. It also reported higher scores on Terminal-Bench 4.0, OSWorld 2.0 and GDPval-AA v2.1 across 44 professional occupations.
Claude Opus 5.5 Expands Across Platforms
Claude Opus 5.5 is available across Anthropic’s ecosystem from September 22. This includes the Claude Platform and Claude Code, while the model is also available through Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.
On the Claude Platform, developers can access it through the Claude API using the model identifier claude-opus-5-5. Anthropic has also increased five-hour usage limits for several Claude subscription plans.
The company says external organisations, including Frontier Design and METR, evaluated the model before its release. However, the performance figures cited above are primarily claims and testing results reported by Anthropic.
Claude 5.5 Family Will Expand Soon
Claude Opus 5.5 is only the beginning of Anthropic’s new model family. The company has confirmed that Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Claude Haiku 5.5 will arrive in the coming weeks.
Anthropic says both models will bring several of the same improvements in performance, efficiency and safety. This means the Claude 5.5 family is set to expand beyond the high-end Opus tier.
For users, the biggest change with Claude Opus 5.5 is the combination of speed and cost. Developers now have a lower-cost standard model and a separate Fast mode when faster responses are needed.
