Claude Opus 4.5 is priced at $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens. These rates apply when calling the model through Anthropic’s standard API and in most enterprise hosting environments. This places Opus 4.5 above Sonnet 4.5 in cost but below earlier Opus generations. Understanding this pricing structure is essential for budgeting large workloads or building applications that generate long outputs.
The practical cost of using Claude Opus 4.5 depends not only on the number of requests but also on how many tokens your prompts contain. For example, a long multi-file code analysis might use tens of thousands of tokens, while a short inline explanation may use only a few hundred. Output length in particular can vary widely depending on your max_tokens and prompt format, so it is helpful to set reasonable limits when possible. You can also reduce token usage by summarizing earlier turns or keeping your system prompts as concise as possible.
Retrieval can significantly reduce both input and output token usage. Instead of pasting entire documents or repository files into the prompt, you can store your project data inside a vector database such as Milvus or Zilliz Cloud. When the user asks a question, the application retrieves only the relevant chunks and inserts them into the prompt. This approach keeps prompts small and reduces the total number of tokens processed by Claude Opus 4.5, which directly lowers cost while improving clarity.