Choose Claude Opus 5 (Fast) if…
No advantage on the data we track — pick it for provider preference or output quality on your own prompts.
Claude Opus 5 (Fast) vs Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2
Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2 comes out ahead on the data we track: 1 advantage and none for Claude Opus 5 (Fast).
Key numbers
| Spec | Claude Opus 5 (Fast) | Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Sakana |
| Input price (per 1M tokens) | $10.00 | $5.00 |
| Output price (per 1M tokens) | $50.00 | $30.00 |
| Blended price (3:1 input/output) | $20.00 | $11.25 |
| Cheaper than … of all models we track | 3% | 5% |
| Context window | 1M tokens (~1,500 pages) | 1M tokens (~1,500 pages) |
| Larger context than … of all models | 68% | 68% |
| Max output per response | 128K tokens (~96,000 words) | 128K tokens (~96,000 words) |
| Input types | text, image, file | text, image, file |
| Output types | text | text |
| Free variant | No | No |
| Listed since | 2026-07-24 | 2026-09-11 |
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What it costs for real workloads
Monthly cost at list price for five common workloads. Token counts per unit are stated so you can scale them to your own traffic. A workload that does not fit a model's context window is marked rather than priced.
| Workload (per month) | Claude Opus 5 (Fast) | Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer-support chatbot 50,000 conversations — each a 6-turn conversation (1,500 in / 400 out tokens) | $1,750 | $975 | Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2 saves $775 |
| RAG search over documents 20,000 questions — each a question answered from ~8 retrieved passages (6,000 in / 500 out tokens) | $1,700 | $900 | Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2 saves $800 |
| Coding / tool-using agent 2,000 tasks — each a multi-step task with tool calls and file context (60,000 in / 6,000 out tokens) | $1,800 | $960 | Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2 saves $840 |
| Batch summarisation 10,000 documents — each a 6,000-word report summarised to a page (8,000 in / 600 out tokens) | $1,100 | $580 | Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2 saves $520 |
| Long-document analysis 500 documents — each a 150-page contract or codebase read in one pass (100,000 in / 2,000 out tokens) | $550 | $280 | Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2 saves $270 |
Capabilities side by side
| Capability | Claude Opus 5 (Fast) | Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2 | What it lets you do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tool / function calling | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | call your APIs and run agent loops |
| Structured output (JSON schema) | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | return JSON that validates against your schema |
| Reasoning / thinking mode | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | spend extra tokens thinking before answering hard problems |
| Image input | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | read screenshots, charts and scanned pages |
| Audio input | — | — | take speech or audio directly |
| File / PDF input | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | accept documents without your own parsing step |
| Image output | — | — | generate images, not just text |
| Built-in web search | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | answer from live web results |
| Seed (reproducible sampling) | — | — | repeat a generation for tests and evals |
| Log-probabilities | — | — | read token confidence for classification and scoring |
From each model's published parameters and input/output types. “—” means not advertised, not proven absent.
Price history
- Claude Opus 5 (Fast): price unchanged since we started tracking it on 2026-08-06.
- Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2: price unchanged since we started tracking it on 2026-09-12.
Which should you choose?
Choose Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2 if…
- cost matters at scale — it is 44% cheaper on a typical 3:1 input/output mix ($975 vs $1,750 a month for 50,000 support chats)
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Opus 5 (Fast) better than Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2?
Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2 comes out ahead on the data we track: 1 advantage and none for Claude Opus 5 (Fast).
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 5 (Fast) or Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2?
Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2 is cheaper: $11.25 vs $20.00 per 1M tokens at a typical 3:1 input/output mix, 44% less. For 50,000 support conversations a month that is $975 against $1,750.
How much do Claude Opus 5 (Fast) and Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2 cost per million tokens?
Claude Opus 5 (Fast) costs $10.00 per 1M input tokens and $50.00 per 1M output tokens; Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2 costs $5.00 input and $30.00 output. Output tokens are billed separately, so long answers shift the gap.
Which has the bigger context window, Claude Opus 5 (Fast) or Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2?
Both take 1M tokens per request — roughly 1,500 pages of text.
Do Claude Opus 5 (Fast) and Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2 support function calling and JSON output?
Tool calling — Claude Opus 5 (Fast): yes, Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2: yes. JSON-schema structured output — Claude Opus 5 (Fast): yes, Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2: yes.
Can Claude Opus 5 (Fast) or Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2 read images?
Yes, both accept image input.
Is Claude Opus 5 (Fast) or Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2 free to use?
No free variant is listed for either; both are pay-per-token.
What is the maximum output length of Claude Opus 5 (Fast) and Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2?
Claude Opus 5 (Fast) can write up to 128K tokens (about 96,000 words) per response; Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2 up to 128K (about 96,000 words).
When were Claude Opus 5 (Fast) and Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2 released?
Claude Opus 5 (Fast) was listed on 2026-07-24; Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2 on 2026-09-11.
About the two models
Claude Opus 5 (Fast)
Fast-mode variant of [Opus 5](/anthropic/claude-opus-5) - identical capabilities with higher output speed at 2x pricing relative to regular Opus 5. Learn more in Anthropic's docs: https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/build-with-claude/fast-mode
Full Claude Opus 5 (Fast) specs →Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2
Fugu Ultra v2 is the higher-performance model in Sakana AI's Fugu family. Rather than a single monolithic model, Fugu is a learned multi-agent orchestration system: a language model trained to...
Full Sakana: Fugu Ultra v2 specs →