# Anthropic ships Claude Opus 5.5, 90 minutes ahead of OpenAI's GPT-6 Sol and Luna

> Anthropic released Claude Opus 5.5 on 22 September 2026 at $4/$20 per million tokens, 20% below Opus 5.

*$4/$20 per million tokens, Fable-level performance claimed, three labs move on price within two days.*

By The FeaturedDaily Desk · FeaturedDaily
Canonical: https://featureddaily.com/news/anthropic-claude-opus-5-5-release

Anthropic released Claude Opus 5.5 on 22 September 2026, on the Claude Platform, AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, callable as claude-opus-5-5. It replaces Opus 5, launched 24 July.

> It performs at the level of Claude Fable 5.1 on most work and costs 40% less to run than Opus 5.
> — [Anthropic](https://www.anthropic.com/claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-22

## Pricing

| Per million tokens | Opus 5.5 | Opus 5 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Input | $4 | $5 |
| Output | $20 | $25 |
| Cache reads | $0.20 | $0.50 |
| Cache writes | $5 | $6.25 |

A fast mode runs at up to 2.5x speed for $8 input / $40 output per million tokens. Anthropic says output generation overall is more than 30% faster than Opus 5.

## Benchmarks and safety

On Anthropic's figures: 66.4% on Terminal-Bench 4.0 (Opus 5 52.3%, GPT-6 Astra 57.9%); 54.4% on FrontierCode v1.1 (Fable 5.1 50.3%); 57.8% on CursorBench 4.0; 1846 Elo on GDPval-AA v2.1 (Fable 5.1 1735); 81.8% on OSWorld 2.0.

Opus 5.5 was tested pre-release by external evaluators Frontier Design and METR. Anthropic says it is the strongest model it has tested on its automated behavioural audit and ties Fable 5.1 for the lowest prompt-injection success rate on a Gray Swan evaluation. It ships with cybersecurity and biology safeguards similar to Fable 5.1's. Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku 5.5 follow in the coming weeks, Anthropic said.

## Timing and competitors

The release is Anthropic's first since CEO Dario Amodei's 12 September essay 'We Must Pace the Frontier', which called for the industry to deliberately slow capability gains so safety work can keep pace.

OpenAI released GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna about 90 minutes after Opus 5.5, per TechCrunch, priced at roughly half the GPT-5.6 generation ($2/$10 for Sol, $0.10/$0.50 for Luna). xAI had released Grok 4.7 the day before, 21 September, at unchanged $2/$6 per million token pricing. Three labs moved on price or capability inside 48 hours.

Anthropic frames Opus 5.5 as its first release since Amodei's essay, arguing pacing is about safety practices keeping up with capability, not a freeze on shipping. The launch page does not link the underlying reports from Frontier Design, METR or Gray Swan; the benchmark and safety figures above are Anthropic's own account of that testing.

## Key takeaways

- Released 22 September 2026, replacing Opus 5 about two months after its July launch.
- Pricing: $4 input / $20 output per million tokens, down from $5/$25; cache reads down 60% to $0.20; fast mode $8/$40.
- Anthropic says it matches Claude Fable 5.1 on most work, costs 40% less to run and outputs over 30% faster.
- Scored 66.4% on Terminal-Bench 4.0 versus Opus 5's 52.3% and GPT-6 Astra's 57.9%, on Anthropic's own figures.
- Landed about 90 minutes before OpenAI's GPT-6 Sol and Luna, and a day after xAI's Grok 4.7.

## FAQ

### What does Claude Opus 5.5 cost?
$4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output, down from Opus 5's $5/$25. Cache reads are $0.20, down from $0.50.

### How does it compare on benchmarks?
66.4% on Terminal-Bench 4.0 against Opus 5's 52.3% and GPT-6 Astra's 57.9%, on Anthropic's own figures.

### Did OpenAI really launch minutes later?
Yes. TechCrunch reported OpenAI released GPT-6 Sol and Luna about 90 minutes after Opus 5.5 went live, the same day.

### What comes next from Anthropic?
Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Claude Haiku 5.5, both described as arriving 'in the coming weeks' with similar performance and efficiency gains.

## Sources

- [Claude Opus 5.5](https://www.anthropic.com/claude-opus-5-5) — Anthropic, 2026-09-22
- [Anthropic releases Opus 5.5 with lower prices and Fable-level performance](https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/22/anthropic-releases-opus-5-5-with-lower-prices-and-fable-level-performance/) — TechCrunch, 2026-09-22
- [OpenAI launches GPT-6 Sol and Luna, boasting lower cost and fewer mistakes](https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/22/openai-launches-gpt-6-sol-and-luna/) — TechCrunch, 2026-09-22
- [We Must Pace the Frontier](https://darioamodei.com/post/we-must-pace-the-frontier) — Dario Amodei / Anthropic, 2026-09-12
- [Introducing Grok 4.7](https://x.ai/news/grok-4-7) — xAI, 2026-09-21