Claude Opus 4.8
Anthropic's former top-tier model, built for complex reasoning and deep analysis.
Quality
Modality
multimodal
Context
1M tokens
Access
closed
Fabian's Take
"Opus used to be my clear go-to for complex architectural work, but between Anthropic's newer tiers and how good Sonnet 5 has gotten, it's been squeezed into a narrower niche. Still incredible at writing and still worth reaching for on the hardest problems."
Claude Opus 4.8 is a highly capable reasoning model from Anthropic. While it has recently been surpassed by models like Claude Fable 5, it remains an exceptionally strong choice for deep conceptual work, long-form writing, and tasks requiring significant nuance.
How it compares
Within the Claude 4 family, Opus sits above Sonnet in terms of raw capability but at a noticeable cost and speed penalty. That gap has narrowed a lot with Sonnet 5, which is close enough on coding and everyday agentic work that it’s the more pragmatic choice for most tasks. Opus still earns its keep when you need a model to read a massive document and extract highly nuanced themes without losing the thread, or push the deepest end of open-ended reasoning.
The Verdict
Best for: Complex analytical tasks where deep reasoning is more important than speed.
Pros
- Nuanced, human-like writing style
- Strong multi-step reasoning capabilities
- Massive 1M token context window
Cons
- Overshadowed by newer Claude tiers like Fable
- Relatively expensive API pricing, and Sonnet 5 now closes most of the quality gap
Specs
- Pricing $5/M input, $25/M output
- Cost Tier premium
- ⚡Speed Tier moderate
- License Proprietary
