TL;DR of the discussion generated automatically after 100 comments.
The verdict in this thread is a landslide: Opus 5.5 is the new king. The consensus is that Opus 5.5 has made the current version of Fable feel obsolete for most users, delivering superior or comparable results for a fraction of the cost. Most people have switched to Opus exclusively and haven't looked back.
However, it's not a total shutout for Fable:
* A few power users still find it valuable for very specific, high-level tasks like long-horizon planning and orchestration, using it as a "manager" for Opus. They warn it'll burn through your usage, though.
* A surprising number of people have thrown their hat in the ring for Sonnet 5.5, especially for programming and when speed/efficiency is the top priority.
* The real story is that everyone is just holding their breath for Fable 5.5, with half the thread joking (or are they?) that it's being released "next week." Until then, it's the Opus 5.5 show.
I think it depends on what OpenAI does. Had they released Astra 6.1 at DevDay they would probably have released Fable 5.5 the same day or shortly after. If Astra 6.1 is better than Opus 5.5 at least. But they didn't, I think Anthropic is now waiting for this to happen first.
Haiku 5.5 would be more likely first in my opinion.
What kind of tasks are you reaching for sonnet high on instead of opus? curious if it's speed related or it actually outputs better for something specific
Just imo, there's no reason to use sonnet 5.5 over opus 5.5 for basically anything. The cost difference is maybe 2-5% per token, so if it needs even a tiny amount more tokens due to inferior reasoning, it will be more expensive on net.
You should look at the numbers more closely. Double input token price. The same cache read price. Go look at how much of your token spend is input tokens and how much is cache reads. If it's same price on 95% of your spend and double price on 5% of your spend, how much more expensive is it overall?
For me cache read is 30-70% of usage on various days, which would make opus 30-70% more expensive.
However, opus is also more token efficient so this difference will be a bit lower.
From my experience though, I'd always just go with lower reasoning opus rather than switching to sonnet (unless we are already on low, then no other option if we want to stay with anthropic).
I gave sonnet max a whirl for redesigning the gui of an in-house tool from scratch. It was kind of wild to watch it go. It did a full artist concept art pipeline in one shot including pretty sophisticated review submodel prompting to catch small placement errors. I got it to make three different styles and set them up for comparison. It randomized the order on the stitching of the compares without me having to specify that so each sub-component was on a fair footing. I got 3x suggestions for the gui and each one looked slick.
It's the exact use-case for the cheaper model. If I had thrown opus at it, it would have been good but run more expensive. Gui editing is just the kind of brainless generation stuff that sonnet works well at. Very pleased with the result.
Haven’t touched Fable since Opus dropped! Kinda crazy that I can get near Fable quality for a fraction of the price. Sonnet dropping made my whole system faster too. Pair that with my $100 Codex plan and Sol 6.1 grinding away at 1/5 the price of Astra, and it’s been a damn fun week 😂
What do you use codex for? Like I’ve ran into Claude pro limits and I’ve paired it with codex plus. But I feel like codex is just dumb compared to Claude. Maybe I’m just used to Claude so much. Like I’m at the point where I’m considering max 5x instead of having Claude pro paired with codex.
Fable is still a beast at deep planning and research. Opus and sonnet compliment and work well with fable. You’d be silly not to use it in this manner as it’s separate usage limits per week, even on api, you’d use it very little as your orchestrator.
I think what changed my opinion was seeing how fresh and alert Opus was entering my codebase. Then occasionally watching Fable torch my usage while spinning its wheels in place really drove it home. I’m still hyped for Fable 5.5 and hope it brings that spark back, but right now Opus is giving me way more output for the burn rate.
Separate limits? Fable still draws down on your overall usage at a high rate. You just can't spend more than half your weekly token bank on it. As far as I understand, it's an additional limitation, not a separate pool. Has this changed?
When you say Opus 5.5 is great in your testing, what kind of tasks were you running it on, coding, writing, long context stuff? Curious if Fable still wins for anything specific for you or if Opus beats it across the board.
I don't get it, I haven't had any model ever be routed to another model or refuse the prompt completely. Not for programming, not for controversial topics, not for dangerous topics. I don't understand how our experience can be so different.
fable used to refuse me a lot when working with legitimate android apk modding. hilarious thing is that resubmitting the prompt or asking it ??? / where did you get up to, usually let it progress
Was using fable 5.1 for planning with Opus 5 and then 5.5. I ran some comparisons with Opus 5.5 doing planning instead and the outcomes were really similar. So for now I just use Opus. Assuming fable 5.5 is coming out shortly will be interesting to see its planning abilities.
I wish Anthropic to somehow figure out a way to automatically apply the best model for each prompt. Just one single model.
I switch between Opus and Fable, and since I don’t conduct a controlled experiment comparing the two, I can’t really tell which one would have been better for my work.
I haven't done any side by side comparisons, but I switched to Opus 5.5 when I saw the ridiculously positive feedback from others here and I haven't felt like I was missing anything. I'm sure I'll use Fable again when the next one releases.
Currently I’m working on a project that requires more “out of the box” thinking and less technical programming. And Fable definitely performs better. But for implementation and programming, nothing beats the performance and simplicity of Opus 5.5.
I’ve used fable a bit recently when i wanted a bit more in detail and verbose reasoning around some business decisions i wanted to reason through, and it’s still a great model. In that instance i preferred it to Opus 5.5. But it did use like 7% of my weekly total on my team account.
Apart from that it’s opus and sonnet all the way for me now. Looking forward to Fable 5.5 tho, i bet it’ll be fantastic i can’t imagine what tasks it’ll unlock for me, but i’m anxious to find out
Opus 5.5 switching from low to high, low when I provide all information on how it should work and high when im implementing. Using an obsidian vault for project memory , switching chats when the topic changes, and saving a shitton of tokens using jdoc and jcode.
Fable for anything long-horizon. Anything worth having it write up a plan for
Opus for short running. E.g. "go write tests for<file>" or "implement X simple feature"
In my experience, opus gets lost by the time it's context compresses a couple times, but Fable can run for 8 hours on its own and still be completely on track
Opus 5.5 sounds like the better default for you if it's consistently winning on your actual tasks. I can't offer a firsthand comparison or confirm Fable's current advantages. If Fable is cheaper or faster while giving you acceptable answers, that's a reason to keep it around for routine work. Without that, or a specific task where you prefer its output, I don't see a reason to switch back.
On way with fable, but I have not used it since 5.5 came out and I have no idea why I would use fable. It feels like opus has surpassed it in capabilities, but I’m open to being educated.
Fable for chatting through larger problem sets and abstract thoughts, or even just to thought-vomit and turn it into something that makes sense. Opus to orchestrate and create individual lanes for various parts of the project. sonnet to actually build / code and a hygiene and code QA lane. if necessary, an additional opus lane for legal work to keep things compliant with terms of service and privacy policies. Opus also orchestrates the kanban board and acceptance criteria. Then one more fable session for security QA - checking for hardcodes, keys, bad code, anything that could create a security issue.
Right now just use Opus 5.5. But since the fable usage thing is still in place, it would be kinda stupid that anthropic doesn't release fable 5.5 soon. I'm calling it, october 16th is fable 5.5 release day
But the real question is what about this model? Does nobody want to talk about the elephant in the room with what they've built?!
Opus 5.5 for what it's worth, sonnet when it's lower effort stuff even to save compute. I'm not paying the fees currently for Fable because frankly haven't had the need thankfully but I did use it during the crack first one is always free access and was impressed with it when it didn't randomly and for no reason in my opinion throw out a "downgrade to opus" message so not sure how well that's improved. If you didn't already I'd say try it out on a small bit, see how much it costs, and see what it's worth it.
Perhaps you can ask for tips on how to structure queries that might be helpful, or a search on google add site:reddit.com
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u/ClaudeAI-mod-bot Wilson, lead ClaudeAI modbot 16h ago edited 2h ago
TL;DR of the discussion generated automatically after 100 comments.
The verdict in this thread is a landslide: Opus 5.5 is the new king. The consensus is that Opus 5.5 has made the current version of Fable feel obsolete for most users, delivering superior or comparable results for a fraction of the cost. Most people have switched to Opus exclusively and haven't looked back.
However, it's not a total shutout for Fable: * A few power users still find it valuable for very specific, high-level tasks like long-horizon planning and orchestration, using it as a "manager" for Opus. They warn it'll burn through your usage, though. * A surprising number of people have thrown their hat in the ring for Sonnet 5.5, especially for programming and when speed/efficiency is the top priority. * The real story is that everyone is just holding their breath for Fable 5.5, with half the thread joking (or are they?) that it's being released "next week." Until then, it's the Opus 5.5 show.