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Claude Opus 4.8

AnthropicLarge Language ModelProprietary

Anthropic's recommended model for complex agentic coding and enterprise work. Offers a 1M context window and adaptive thinking that defaults to high effort, making it the current flagship for demanding multi-step tasks.

Abilities

Text GenerationCode GenerationReasoningMathVisionFunction CallingStructured OutputLong ContextMultilingual

Use Cases

Coding AssistantResearchEnterpriseData AnalysisContent Writing

Available in Tools

Availability

Claude Mobile
Amazon Bedrock
Google Vertex AI
Microsoft Foundry

How to Use

Use the Anthropic Messages API with model ID `claude-opus-4-8`. Adaptive thinking defaults to high effort — use the `effort` parameter to adjust. Recommended as the primary model for complex agentic work.

Pros

  • Recommended by Anthropic for complex agentic coding and enterprise work
  • 1M token context window with 128K max output — holds full codebases and extensive documentation in context
  • Adaptive thinking defaults to high effort on all surfaces — optimizes reasoning depth automatically
  • Best balance of capability and cost in the premium Claude tier at $5/$25 per MTok
  • Available on AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, and Microsoft Foundry for enterprise compliance

Cons

  • Closed source — no self-hosting or model customization
  • Slower than Sonnet 5 and Haiku 4.5 for latency-sensitive applications
  • At $5/1M input still costly for very high-volume workloads

What to Use It For

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Perfect For

Complex agentic coding with Claude Code

Anthropic's recommended model for complex multi-step coding tasks — high-effort adaptive thinking by default

Enterprise knowledge work and analysis

Strong across reasoning, document analysis, and multi-step problem solving at a practical price point

Processing massive documents and codebases

1M context window lets it hold entire repos or book-length documents in context

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Good For

Long-form content and documentation writing

Strong quality-per-cost ratio for comprehensive reports, documentation, and editorial content

Multi-step agentic workflows

Reliable tool use and instruction following for complex automation pipelines

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Not Recommended

Real-time user-facing chat

Moderate latency — use Sonnet 5 or Haiku 4.5 for interactive applications

Try instead: Claude Sonnet 5, Claude Haiku 4.5

High-volume cost-sensitive batch tasks

At $5/1M input still costly at scale — Sonnet 5 or Haiku 4.5 are better picks

Try instead: Claude Sonnet 5, Claude Haiku 4.5

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Do Not Use For

Image generation

Text and vision LLM — no image generation capabilities

Try instead: DALL-E 3, FLUX.1

On-device or offline deployment

Cloud-only closed model — requires Anthropic API connection

Try instead: Llama 4 Scout

Technical Details

Pricing$5 / 1M input tokens, $25 / 1M output tokens
ParametersUndisclosed
detail.contextWindow1M tokens (128K max output)

Links