THE ROUTING RULE
Opus 5 wins 8 of 13 rows on Anthropic's own launch chart, at half Fable 5's price. That flipped how I route work across my agents. This page has the exact rule, plus the one-page cheat sheet.
Neej
I build AI teams that run real businesses
WHAT'S GOING ON
Drop your email and I'll send the routing cheat sheet
The one-page Claude routing rule: which model gets which job, what the effort dial replaces, and when a Fable 5 session is worth 2x the price. Plus whatever I learn running 20+ agents each week.
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THE ROUTING RULE — 4 MOVES
Code, subagents, long agent runs, computer use. It ships at the same price Opus 4.8 did and it's included flat on a Max plan. Within half a percent of Fable 5 on agentic coding benchmarks. Anthropic's own launch table below. Default everything here first.
Opus 5 $5 / MTok in $25 / MTok out Fable 5 $10 / MTok in $50 / MTok out Sonnet 5 $2 / MTok in $10 / MTok out (intro pricing)
Opus 5 has an effort setting: low, medium, high, xhigh, max. Medium handles most work. A hard bug gets high or max before it gets a more expensive model. That dial kills most of the reasons people used to reach for the flagship. Anthropic's chart below: score per dollar by effort level, and the Opus 5 curve sits above everyone.
It keeps the deeper raw brain: system design, big planning calls, orchestration decisions, taste. The tell is one benchmark row. Humanity's Last Exam with no tools: Fable wins. With tools: Opus 5 wins. But Fable bills usage credits at API rates even on Max, so it runs in short fresh-context sessions and has to earn every call. Escalate only after max-effort Opus 5 fails.
The whole rule on one page: three models, their jobs, their prices, the escalation ladder. Save it, and send it to whoever still routes everything to the most expensive model out of habit.
Download the cheat sheet →SOURCES — STRAIGHT FROM THE VENDORS
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