Vals Index Opus 4.8 > 5.0 goes from $2.90 to $8.54, for 4% gain ... That is a massive cost increase. Sure, 20% cheaper then Fable, but that is a 3x price increase compared to Opus 4.8 in that test.
Your numbers are for “max”. Opus 5.0 “max” is $2.03. Opus 5.0 “high” (competitive with Claude 4.8 “max” on that index) is $1.06, less than the $1.80 you are quoting for 4.8 max.
That the most expensive variant is expensive doesn’t really tell us much.
If you start to drop effort levels, you need to compare to the competition models. So GPT models on the same ~intelligence level, are then 50% cheaper.
You see the issue? Its still a expensive model, and from my understanding, it still uses the old tokenizer.
Going to be interesting to see when GPT 6 comes out (very soon).
> If you start to drop effort levels, you need to compare to the competition models.
Yes. I advocate for doing that.
> So GPT models on the same ~intelligence level, are then 50% cheaper.
How did you reach this conclusion? Opus 5 high ($1.06) has the same “intelligence index” as GPT 5.6 Sol max ($1.04). Opus 5 medium ($0.62) performs a bit below GPT 5.6 Sol xhigh ($0.68) but slightly above GPT 5.6 Sol high ($0.45).
That the most expensive variant is expensive doesn’t really tell us much.