Claude Opus 4.8 is Anthropic's flagship model, released May 27, 2026 as an upgrade to Opus 4.7. It ships with a 1M-token context window on by default, adjustable reasoning effort, and new agent-orchestration features in Claude Code, at the same price as its predecessor. This guide covers Opus 4.8's specs, pricing, benchmarks, and where it's actually worth using — plus how it fits into Chat Smith's current model lineup.
Claude Opus 4.8 (model ID: claude-opus-4-8) is Anthropic's largest generally available model, built for long-running, autonomous agents. It builds on the coding and agentic strengths of Opus 4.7, with stronger performance on complex, multi-step tasks and more reliable execution across extended workflows — large codebases, multi-stage debugging, and end-to-end project orchestration.
It launched alongside user-level effort control on claude.ai, letting people dial how much reasoning the model applies to a task, and a new "Dynamic Workflows" feature in Claude Code that lets one agent plan, fan out into many parallel subagents, and merge the results in a single session. As of June 2026, Opus 4.8 is no longer Anthropic's most capable model overall — that title moved to the Mythos-tier models — but it remains the flagship of the Opus line.
| Spec | Claude Opus 4.8 |
|---|---|
| Release date | May 27, 2026 |
| Model ID | claude-opus-4-8 |
| Context window | 1,000,000 tokens (on by default) |
| Max output | 128,000 tokens |
| Standard input price | $5.00 / 1M tokens |
| Standard output price | $25.00 / 1M tokens |
| Fast Mode price | $10.00 / 1M input, $50.00 / 1M output (~2.5x speed) |
| Effort control | Low, high, extra, max (xhigh in Claude Code) |
| Vision, tool use, computer use | Yes |
| Intelligence Index (Artificial Analysis) | 55.7 |
| GPQA | 92.0 |
Opus 4.8 introduces user-adjustable effort levels — low, high, extra, and max, with an xhigh option surfaced in Claude Code. The default (high) uses a similar token budget to Opus 4.7's default but performs better, while dialing down to low cuts both tokens and latency for calls that need Opus-class capability without maximum depth.
Unlike earlier Opus releases where the 1M-token window was a beta feature, Opus 4.8 ships with it on by default alongside a 128K token output limit. That's enough headroom to keep an entire codebase, a long legal document set, or hours of agent transcript in context without chunking.
Anthropic reports Opus 4.8 is roughly four times less likely than its predecessor to let flaws in its own code pass unremarked, and it scores 84% on Online-Mind2Web, a browser-agent benchmark. Claude Code's new Workflows primitive lets the model plan a large task and fan it out across parallel subagents inside one session — useful for sprawling refactors or multi-stage research.
| Aspect | Opus 4.7 | Opus 4.8 |
|---|---|---|
| Released | April 16, 2026 | May 27, 2026 |
| Input / output price (per 1M) | $5.00 / $25.00 | $5.00 / $25.00 (unchanged) |
| Context window | 1M tokens (beta) | 1M tokens (on by default) |
| Effort control | Fixed | User-adjustable: low / high / extra / max |
| Code review reliability | Baseline | ~4x fewer unremarked code flaws |
| Claude Code agent orchestration | Standard | Dynamic Workflows (parallel subagents) |
Pricing didn't change between the two releases, which makes Opus 4.8 close to a straight upgrade for anyone already paying for Opus-class capability. The bigger shift is in control and reliability: adjustable effort levels and Dynamic Workflows give teams more ways to manage cost and orchestrate larger tasks, which matters more for production agents than raw benchmark gains.
Opus 4.8 is built for depth and autonomy rather than high-volume, low-cost calls. It's strongest in:
Claude Opus 4.8 itself isn't integrated into Chat Smith. The platform currently offers Claude Sonnet 5, Anthropic's balanced mid-tier model, alongside frontier models from OpenAI, Google, and xAI — all in one chat app.
Claude Opus 4.8 is a meaningful step for teams running autonomous agents at scale — a bigger default context window, adjustable effort, and more reliable code review, all at unchanged pricing from Opus 4.7. It's not currently available on Chat Smith, but Claude Sonnet 5 covers most of the same day-to-day use cases alongside other leading models in one app.
Claude Opus 4.8 is Anthropic's most capable Opus-line model at this point, built for the hardest reasoning, research, and complex coding tasks rather than everyday speed. Chat Smith doesn't currently offer Claude Opus 4.8 directly.
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