Claude Opus 5.5 (max) costs $5.98 per Intelligence Index task, which is similar to Opus 5 (max) at $5.86, but this bundles a significant token usage increase with Anthropic’s price reductions
Compared to Opus 5, Opus 5.5’s increased token usage would drive an ~80% increase in cost per task to $10.51. However, the 20% cut to base prices takes that to $8.41, and then cutting cache reads further to $0.20 takes it to $5.98 (an additional 29% cut)
For more analysis of the Opus 5.5 release see https://t.co/dIBD9GMiu0
token — The chunk of text a model reads and writes in — roughly three-quarters of a word — and the unit AI usage is billed in.
Why it matters
Shows Opus 5.5's real-world cost is driven far more by increased tokenThe chunk of text a model reads and writes in — roughly three-quarters of a word — and the unit AI usage is billed in.Full definition → usage than by its lower list price, a distinction engineers need before estimating spend from pricing cuts alone.
