Anthropic’s AI pricing war heats up as Claude model lineup reshuffles

Anthropic is making moves in the AI model wars, and this time the weapon of choice is price. The company has been rapidly expanding its Claude model lineup in recent weeks, rolling out new tiers and slashing costs in ways that should make every enterprise CTO pay close attention. Claude Sonnet 5 arrived on June 30, priced at just $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens through August 31. It’s now the default model for both Free and Pro plan users. The Claude lineup is getting complicated Claude Opus 4.8 dropped on May 28, maintaining its predecessor’s price point of $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens. It brought improvements in coding capabilities and safety features. Then came Claude Fable 5 on June 9, which Anthropic is calling a “Mythos-class” model. Fable 5 sits above the Opus tier entirely, commanding $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens. That’s double the Opus 4.8 rate. Sonnet 5 slots in at the bottom of the pricing stack, resulting in a three-tier pricing structure that ranges from $2 to $10 per million input tokens — a 5x spread across the lineup. Export controls add a wrinkle Fable 5’s launch wasn’t...