Claude 2.1 vs Claude Opus 4.8

Side by side pricing and context for Claude 2.1 and Claude Opus 4.8. Rates are curated catalog values with last verified dates on each model page.

Claude 2.1

Legacy Claude 2.1 row for archival invoice comparisons. Do not start new products here; use current Sonnet or Opus ids instead.

Input $8.00 / Output $24.00 per 1M

Context 200K · Approx (Anthropic family)

Claude Opus 4.8

Anthropic top-tier Claude for complex analysis, coding, and long-horizon agents. Highest Claude list prices here. Model cache savings carefully before high traffic.

Input $5.00 / Output $25.00 per 1M

Context 1M · Approx (Anthropic family)


Quick take

  • Claude Opus 4.8 is cheaper on input in this catalog snapshot.
  • Claude 2.1 is cheaper on output in this catalog snapshot.
  • Both last verified on their model pages (2026-08-02 / 2026-08-02).

Rate table

MetricClaude 2.1Claude Opus 4.8
Input / 1M$8.00$5.00
Output / 1M$24.00$25.00
Cached input / 1Mn/a$0.500
Context200K1M
TokenizerApprox (Anthropic family)Approx (Anthropic family)