Anthropic: Claude Opus 5.5 (batch) vs Sakana: Fugu Max

Sakana: Fugu Max comes out ahead on the data we track: 1 advantage and none for Anthropic: Claude Opus 5.5 (batch).

Key numbers

SpecAnthropic: Claude Opus 5.5 (batch)Sakana: Fugu Max
ProviderAnthropicSakana
Input price (per 1M tokens)$2.00$2.00
Output price (per 1M tokens)$10.00$6.00
Blended price (3:1 input/output)$4.00$3.00
Cheaper than … of all models we track15%20%
Context window1M tokens (~1,500 pages)1M tokens (~1,500 pages)
Larger context than … of all models68%68%
Max output per response128K tokens (~96,000 words)128K tokens (~96,000 words)
Input typestext, image, filetext, image, file
Output typestexttext
Free variantNoNo
Listed since2026-09-222026-09-11
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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)Anthropic: Claude Opus 5.5 (batch)Sakana: Fugu MaxDifference
Customer-support chatbot
50,000 conversations — each a 6-turn conversation (1,500 in / 400 out tokens)
$350$270Sakana: Fugu Max saves $80.00
RAG search over documents
20,000 questions — each a question answered from ~8 retrieved passages (6,000 in / 500 out tokens)
$340$300Sakana: Fugu Max saves $40.00
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)
$360$312Sakana: Fugu Max saves $48.00
Batch summarisation
10,000 documents — each a 6,000-word report summarised to a page (8,000 in / 600 out tokens)
$220$196Sakana: Fugu Max saves $24.00
Long-document analysis
500 documents — each a 150-page contract or codebase read in one pass (100,000 in / 2,000 out tokens)
$110$106Sakana: Fugu Max saves $4.00

Capabilities side by side

CapabilityAnthropic: Claude Opus 5.5 (batch)Sakana: Fugu MaxWhat it lets you do
Tool / function calling✓ Yes✓ Yescall your APIs and run agent loops
Structured output (JSON schema)✓ Yes✓ Yesreturn JSON that validates against your schema
Reasoning / thinking mode✓ Yes✓ Yesspend extra tokens thinking before answering hard problems
Image input✓ Yes✓ Yesread screenshots, charts and scanned pages
Audio input——take speech or audio directly
File / PDF input✓ Yes✓ Yesaccept documents without your own parsing step
Image output——generate images, not just text
Built-in web search✓ Yes✓ Yesanswer 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

Which should you choose?

Choose Anthropic: Claude Opus 5.5 (batch) if…

No advantage on the data we track — pick it for provider preference or output quality on your own prompts.

Choose Sakana: Fugu Max if…

  • cost matters at scale — it is 25% cheaper on a typical 3:1 input/output mix ($270 vs $350 a month for 50,000 support chats)

Frequently asked questions

Is Anthropic: Claude Opus 5.5 (batch) better than Sakana: Fugu Max?

Sakana: Fugu Max comes out ahead on the data we track: 1 advantage and none for Anthropic: Claude Opus 5.5 (batch).

Which is cheaper, Anthropic: Claude Opus 5.5 (batch) or Sakana: Fugu Max?

Sakana: Fugu Max is cheaper: $3.00 vs $4.00 per 1M tokens at a typical 3:1 input/output mix, 25% less. For 50,000 support conversations a month that is $270 against $350.

How much do Anthropic: Claude Opus 5.5 (batch) and Sakana: Fugu Max cost per million tokens?

Anthropic: Claude Opus 5.5 (batch) costs $2.00 per 1M input tokens and $10.00 per 1M output tokens; Sakana: Fugu Max costs $2.00 input and $6.00 output. Output tokens are billed separately, so long answers shift the gap.

Which has the bigger context window, Anthropic: Claude Opus 5.5 (batch) or Sakana: Fugu Max?

Both take 1M tokens per request — roughly 1,500 pages of text.

Do Anthropic: Claude Opus 5.5 (batch) and Sakana: Fugu Max support function calling and JSON output?

Tool calling — Anthropic: Claude Opus 5.5 (batch): yes, Sakana: Fugu Max: yes. JSON-schema structured output — Anthropic: Claude Opus 5.5 (batch): yes, Sakana: Fugu Max: yes.

Can Anthropic: Claude Opus 5.5 (batch) or Sakana: Fugu Max read images?

Yes, both accept image input.

Is Anthropic: Claude Opus 5.5 (batch) or Sakana: Fugu Max free to use?

No free variant is listed for either; both are pay-per-token.

What is the maximum output length of Anthropic: Claude Opus 5.5 (batch) and Sakana: Fugu Max?

Anthropic: Claude Opus 5.5 (batch) can write up to 128K tokens (about 96,000 words) per response; Sakana: Fugu Max up to 128K (about 96,000 words).

When were Anthropic: Claude Opus 5.5 (batch) and Sakana: Fugu Max released?

Anthropic: Claude Opus 5.5 (batch) was listed on 2026-09-22; Sakana: Fugu Max on 2026-09-11.

About the two models

Sakana

Sakana: Fugu Max

Fugu Max is the cost-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 route...

Full Sakana: Fugu Max specs →

Compare Anthropic: Claude Opus 5.5 (batch) with other models

Compare Sakana: Fugu Max with other models

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