Claude Fable 5.1 pricing in 2026
What one task costs on Claude Fable 5.1
Per-million-token prices are hard to feel, so here are typical token counts for common jobs priced with Claude Fable 5.1. Figures are USD at the rates above and exclude prompt caching and batch discounts.
| Task | Tokens (in / out) | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Code review of a 500-line pull request | 60,000 / 4,000 | $0.800 |
| Debug one failing test | 40,000 / 6,000 | $0.700 |
| Generate a landing page in one shot | 3,000 / 30,000 | $1.53 |
| Draft a 1,200-word article | 2,000 / 2,500 | $0.145 |
| Answer a question from a 20-page document | 25,000 / 800 | $0.290 |
| Multi-step agent run (10 tool calls) | 250,000 / 25,000 | $3.75 |
| All of the above, once | $7.21 |
Cheaper at the same or better capability: GLM-5.3 FlashX runs the same set of tasks for $0.226 instead of $7.21.
Claude Fable 5.1 by Anthropic costs $10 per 1M input tokens and $50 per 1M output tokens — about 25.0k tokens per $1. Prices last verified 2026-09-19.
The verdict
The highest-indexed model we track (53 on Artificial Analysis's current scale) and the new one-shot king — for $10 / $50 per 1M. It is a premium tier in every sense: Anthropic prices it like a flagship, but it is the only model where we see practitioners consistently describe first-pass, production-ready output on real projects. If you pay for AI by the outcome rather than the token, this is the ceiling right now.
A concrete example: sending 100,000 input tokens and getting back 20,000 output tokens with Claude Fable 5.1 costs about $2 at current prices.
Who is Claude Fable 5.1 for?
Claude Fable 5.1 is Anthropic's premium adaptive-reasoning tier and the highest-scoring model on this site, at 53 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index. It improves on Fable 5 across the board, with the biggest gains in agentic coding, long-running agent workflows and knowledge work — the long refactors and front-end rebuilds where one-shot reliability actually saves money.
The trade-off is price and patience: $10 / $50 per 1M makes it the most expensive API tier we track, and it is verbose enough that costs stack up quickly. Cache hits are unusually cheap (2.5% of input), which softens the blow for repeated context. In practice most people reach it through a Claude Pro or Max subscription — both now include Fable 5.1 via usage credits or weekly limits — rather than through the API.
Strengths & weaknesses
- Strength: Top of the intelligence index — first-pass quality
- Best for: One-shot, Vibe coding, Design, Quality
- Weakness: The most expensive API tier we track ($10 / $50 per 1M) and verbose; realistically a subscription model rather than an API one.
Claude Fable 5.1 key facts
| Provider | Claude pricing |
|---|---|
| Input price | $10 / 1M tokens |
| Output price | $50 / 1M tokens |
| Tokens / $1 | 25.0k |
| Intelligence / $1 | 13,250 |
| Context window | 1.0M tokens |
| Tier | frontier |
| Speed | Average |
| Intelligence index | 53 / 100 |
| Released | 2026-08-31 |
| Last verified | 2026-09-19 |
What Claude Fable 5.1 delivers for your budget
For a coding workload, here is roughly what each monthly budget buys:
| Budget | Tokens / month | Months of workload |
|---|---|---|
| $20 | 1.0M | 1.6x |
| $50 | 2.6M | 4.0x |
| $100 | 5.2M | 8.0x |
Other Claude models
How Claude Fable 5.1 compares to its closest rivals
Rather than repeating the full catalog on every page, here are the three current models nearest to Claude Fable 5.1 on the intelligence index — and why you might still pick one instead:
- GPT-6 Astra (ChatGPT) — $10 input / $50 output per 1M tokens. Why you might pick it: Frontier reasoning inside ChatGPT Plus and Pro.
- Claude Opus 5 (Claude) — $5 input / $25 output per 1M tokens. Why you might pick it: Coding and long-context favourite.
- Muse Spark 1.3 (Meta) — $1.25 input / $4.25 output per 1M tokens. Why you might pick it: Frontier index at roughly a tenth of the premium tiers' price.
Claude Fable 5.1 — frequently asked questions
How much does Claude Fable 5.1 cost?
Claude Fable 5.1 by Anthropic costs $10 per 1M input tokens and $50 per 1M output tokens.
How many tokens per dollar does Claude Fable 5.1 give you?
On a typical 1:3 input-to-output mix, Claude Fable 5.1 delivers around 25.0k tokens per dollar — an intelligence-per-dollar score of 13250.
What is Claude Fable 5.1's context window?
Claude Fable 5.1 supports a context window of 1.0M tokens.
Is Claude Fable 5.1 worth it in 2026?
Claude Fable 5.1 is Claude's frontier tier model. Use the AI Intelligence Calculator to see how its value compares to every other model at your budget.