LLM prices / Anthropic / Claude Opus 5.5
Anthropic API · prices checked Oct 23, 2026
Claude Opus 5.5 API pricing
Short answerClaude Opus 5.5 costs $4 per 1M input tokens and $20 per 1M output tokens on the Anthropic API (standard price, checked Oct 23, 2026). A typical chatbot reply (1,500 tokens in, 400 out) costs $0.01, so 1,000 replies a day is about $420 a month and 1M replies is $14,000. That makes it tied #20 cheapest of the 29 current models for that job (same price as GPT-5.6 Sol).
Best for
- Long repeated prompts (agents, RAG with a fixed prefix): cached input bills at 5% of the normal input price.
- Bulk jobs that can wait: the batch API bills input at 50% of the standard price.
- Whole codebases or contracts in one prompt: 1M tokens of context.
- Reading more than text: takes image input.
Skip if
- No price or spec red flags in the data.
Rules: Best for = cheapest quarter of current models for a chatbot reply, top 3 on one of our 8 jobs, cache reads at 15% or less of input, batch at 60% or less, 1M+ context, non-text inputs. Skip if = not current on the provider's page, priciest quarter, text only, no cache or batch price, a long-prompt surcharge, preview, under 200K context, no tool calling. Price and spec facts only; we don't score answer quality.
What your volume costs
Pick a job and a monthly volume. Same prices as everything on this page; caching and batch applied where they make it cheaper.
Cost per task, 8 jobs
Per 1,000 requests and per month at a typical volume, billed the cheapest way the price list allows. The rank is among current models that fit the job.
| Job (links to the cheapest model for it) | Per 1,000 | A month | Rank among fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chatbota 1,500-token prompt (system prompt plus the conversation so far) and a 400-token reply | $14.00standard price | $420at 30,000 a month | tied #20 of 29 |
| RAG (answer from your docs)6,000 tokens of retrieved passages plus the question, and a 500-token answer | $34.00standard price | $1,020at 30,000 a month | tied #20 of 29 |
| Coding agent40,000 tokens of repo context and history, 30,000 of them repeated from the last step and billed at the cache-read price, 2,000 tokens out, tool calling required | $86.00with the repeated 30,000 tokens billed at the cache-read price | $258at 3,000 a month | #20 of 29 |
| Tool-using agent12,000 tokens of instructions, tool definitions and history, 10,000 of them repeated from the last step and cached, 600 tokens out, tool calling required | $22.00with the repeated 10,000 tokens billed at the cache-read price | $220at 10,000 a month | #20 of 29 |
| Vision (read an image)one image counted as 1,000 input tokens plus a 300-token question, and a 300-token answer. Providers count image tokens differently, so treat vision costs as a rough guide | $11.20standard price | $112at 10,000 a month | tied #19 of 28 |
| Translationa 1,000-token passage in and about 1,100 tokens out (translations run a little longer than the source) | $26.00standard price | $260at 10,000 a month | tied #20 of 29 |
| Batch extraction2,000 tokens per record in and 300 tokens of JSON out, through the batch API where there is one (results within 24 hours) | $7.00through the batch API | $700at 100,000 a month | tied #20 of 29 |
| Summarize long documentsa 20,000-token document in and an 800-token summary out | $96.00standard price | $96.00at 1,000 a month | tied #20 of 29 |
Cheaper and pricier alternatives
The current models just below and just above Claude Opus 5.5 on the cost of 1,000 chatbot replies, with what differs. Price only, not quality.
Cheaper
- GPT-5.4 $9.750.70x the cost of a chatbot reply, OpenAI, 1.05M context vs 1M.
- GPT-5.2 $8.220.59x the cost of a chatbot reply, OpenAI, 400K context vs 1M.
- GPT-5.6 Terra $7.800.56x the cost of a chatbot reply, OpenAI, 1.05M context vs 1M.
Pricier
- GPT-5.6 Sol $14.001.00x the cost of a chatbot reply, OpenAI, 1.05M context vs 1M.
- GPT-5.5 $19.501.39x the cost of a chatbot reply, OpenAI, 1.05M context vs 1M.
- chat-latest $19.501.39x the cost of a chatbot reply, OpenAI, 400K context vs 1M.
Every price tier
| Input | $4 per 1M tokens |
| Output | $20 per 1M tokens |
| Cache write | $5 (5m), $8 (1h) |
| Cache read (hit) | $0.2 (5% of the input price) |
| Batch API | $2 input / $10 output |
| Fast tier | $8 input / $40 output |
| API model id | claude-opus-5-5 |
| Status on the pricing page | listed |
Provider notes: fast mode (other_tiers.fast) is a separate premium tier; cache multipliers apply on top; US-only inference (inference_geo "us") is 1.1x on Claude 4.6 and later
Model facts from Anthropic
| Context window | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Max output | 128,000 tokens |
| Input types | text, image |
| Tool calling | yes |
| Lifecycle | current |
| Provider note | Current model. Page lists 1M tokens context, 128K tokens max output |
Source: https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/models/overview, checked Oct 24, 2026.
The 6 classic workloads
Per 1,000 requests at the standard price. "With caching" bills the repeated part of the prompt at the cache-read price (cache writes not counted); "via batch" uses the batch API price. Run your own token counts in the LLM API cost calculator.
| Workload | Claude Opus 5.5per 1,000 requests |
|---|---|
| Chatbot replya 1,500-token prompt (1,000 of it a fixed system prompt) and a 400-token answer | $14.00$10.20 with caching |
| Answer from your docs (RAG)6,000 tokens of retrieved context plus the question, a 500-token answer | $34.00$30.20 with caching |
| Summarize a long documenta 20,000-token document in, an 800-token summary out | $96.00$92.20 with caching |
| Coding agent step40,000 tokens of repo context and history (30,000 of it repeated from the last step), 2,000 out | $200$86.00 with caching |
| Batch extraction2,000 tokens per record in, 300 tokens of JSON out, sent through the batch API where there is one | $14.00$7.00 via batch |
| Long-document Q&Aa 150,000-token contract or codebase in one prompt, a 1,000-token answer | $620 |
What the numbers say
- Output costs 5x input on Claude Opus 5.5, so for answer-heavy jobs the output price drives the bill; for document-heavy jobs (RAG, summaries, agents) input does.
- Caching matters: a coding-agent step that rereads 30,000 cached tokens costs 57% less than the same step uncached ($86.00 vs $200 per 1,000 steps, cache writes not counted). How to stop paying twice for repeated prompts: LLM semantic cache.
- Among 14 listed Anthropic models it is the #7 cheapest for a chat reply.
- Same standard input/output price as GPT-5.6 Sol; the differences are in caching, batch and long-prompt tiers.
Every listed Anthropic model, cheapest first
Same chatbot workload, 1,000 replies.
| Model | Input / 1M | Output / 1M | 1,000 chat replies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 5.5 | $0.1 | $0.5 | $0.35 |
| Claude Haiku 4.5legacy | $1 | $5 | $3.50 |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | $2 | $10 | $7.00 |
| Claude Sonnet 5legacy | $2 | $10 | $7.00 |
| Claude Sonnet 4.6legacy | $3 | $15 | $10.50 |
| Claude Sonnet 4.5deprecated | $3 | $15 | $10.50 |
| Claude Opus 5.5 | $4 | $20 | $14.00 |
| Claude Opus 5legacy | $5 | $25 | $17.50 |
| Claude Opus 4.8legacy | $5 | $25 | $17.50 |
| Claude Opus 4.7legacy | $5 | $25 | $17.50 |
| Claude Opus 4.6legacy | $5 | $25 | $17.50 |
| Claude Opus 4.5legacy | $5 | $25 | $17.50 |
| Claude Fable 5.1 | $10 | $50 | $35.00 |
| Claude Fable 5legacy | $10 | $50 | $35.00 |
Closest price from other providers
The current model from each other provider whose chatbot-reply cost is nearest. Price only: we do not rank quality here.
| Model | Input / 1M | Output / 1M | 1,000 chat replies | vs Claude Opus 5.5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-5.6 SolOpenAI | $4 | $20 | $14.00 | 1.00x |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro PreviewGoogle | $2 | $12 | $7.80 | 0.56x |
| DeepSeek V4 ProDeepSeek | $1.32 | $3.96 | $3.56 | 0.25x |
Head-to-head
Price history
- Oct 17, 2026: Claude Opus 5.5 first recorded: $4 input / $20 output per 1M tokens.
- Checked against the provider page on 2 dates: Oct 17, 2026, Oct 23, 2026.
Every change we record is on the LLM price changelog.
Sources
- Anthropic API pricing: https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing, checked Oct 23, 2026.
- Context, inputs and lifecycle: https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/models/overview, checked Oct 24, 2026.
- Dataset: llm-prices (every row names its page and check date) and /llm/prices.csv.
Prices change often. If one is out of date, email matt@tensorust.com and we will fix it.