Claude Opus 5.5 Leak: Two-Version Jump, Cheaper Than Ever

Hold onto your hats, folks. While everyone was busy waiting for Claude Opus 5.2, Anthropic seems to have pulled a fast one. Word on the street is that the next version isn't 5.2—it's 5.5, codenamed "claude-wafer-eap," and it's already in secret testing. Developer Lyra spilled the beans earlier today, hinting that if we're lucky, it might drop as soon as Tuesday. Talk about a surprise party.

Pricing That Makes Your Wallet Happy

So, what's the big deal? Well, for starters, Opus 5.5 is gunning straight for GPT-6. But the real shocker is the leaked price list: $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens. That's a solid 20% haircut compared to Opus 5's $5 and $25. But wait, there's more—the caching mechanism got a serious upgrade. Cache reads now cost a mere $0.2 per million tokens, with writes at $5. For businesses building long-context autonomous agents, that's like going from buying a sports car to a bicycle. Anthropic is basically saying, "Top-tier AI isn't just for the elite anymore."

Testers Are Saying It's a Big Win

The release schedule is weird, to say the least. Opus 5 launched on July 24th, then a quick 5.2 checkpoint, and now—bam—5.5. Developer Harshith, who's in on the internal testing, didn't hold back: "Opus 5.5 is a big win, much better than previous Fable 5.1 and Astra." He even had it generate a 3D model of a Waymo self-driving car, complete with the Jaguar logo and top lidar sensor, all at half the cost of Opus 5. Another dev built a web-based 3D car viewer using Three.js and a "Walle robot" control console, and apparently, the UI and mechanical integration are rock solid.

Fable 5.2: The Quiet Overachiever

Meanwhile, Fable is getting some love too. Developer Pankaj Kumar released a preview of Fable 5.2, noting that the official seems to be quietly shifting from 5.1 to 5.2. He rated its 3D generation as caught up to or even surpassing Astra—without detailed prompts, it can whip up a "cliffside villa" with realistic lighting, material reflections, and atmosphere. It can also generate a full game using Three.js. Another tester, without any materials or plugins, used native JS to create a "mini world" with dozens of top modeling elements, facial micro-expressions, dynamic effects, and interaction logic, all running smoothly.

Key Points

Claude Opus 5.5 is in internal testing, skipping 5.2 entirely, and may launch as early as Tuesday.
Pricing drops to $4/$20 per million tokens, with cache reads at just $0.2 per million—a huge win for agent builders.
Testers report significant improvements, generating detailed 3D models at half the cost of Opus 5.
Fable 5.2 is also making waves, with 3D generation that rivals Astra and can create full games from simple prompts.

Claude Opus 5.5 Leak: Two-Version Jump, Cheaper Than Ever