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Claude Opus 5.5 Release Date: The Leak, the Price, the Fake

Nitish Garg · Founder & CEO, CellCog · 20 September 2026 · 13 min read · 2,768 words
At a glanceQuick answers
Is Claude Opus 5.5 released?
No. As of 19:10 UTC on September 20, 2026 there is no Anthropic announcement, model card, API identifier, price or documentation entry for an Opus 5.5. Anthropic’s newest Opus is Claude Opus 5, released July 24, 2026; its newest model is Claude Fable 5.1, released September 1.
Where does the name come from?
One X account, @lyraxana, at 13:43 UTC on September 20: Anthropic is stealth testing claude-opus-5-5 under the codename claude-wafer-eap, planned for release on Tuesday. A second account explained the same morning that the model it had been calling Opus 5.2 was renamed 5.5 in a recent leak. Nothing from Anthropic.
When is Opus 5.5 coming out?
Anthropic has not said. The leaker’s date is Tuesday, September 22, 2026. Polymarket prices the next Claude Opus at 73.5 percent by September 24 and 89 percent by September 30, read at 19:12 UTC.
What would it cost?
Unknown. A leaked sheet posted at 15:30 UTC says $4 per million input tokens, $20 output, $0.20 cache read and $5 cache write, each 20 percent under Claude Opus 5 except the cache read at 60 percent under. Anthropic’s pricing page lists Opus 5 at $5 and $25 and no Opus 5.5.
Is the Waymo render real?
No, by the poster’s own retraction at 19:00 UTC: the footage came from a YouTube video uploaded on September 18. The retraction reached about 2 percent of the audience the original did.
Editorial data illustration on a near-white ground: a large navy price tag reading $20 PER 1M OUT with the word LEAKED stamped across it beside a smaller grey tag reading $25, a wall calendar with Tuesday circled in rust and a dashed question mark inside the circle, and a small filing cabinet labelled Anthropic with one open drawer and nothing in it
Fig 0A price tag with a leaked number, a calendar with a circled Tuesday, and a filing cabinet with nothing in it.

Claude Opus 5.5 has a release date in exactly the sense that one X account has posted one. At 13:43 UTC on September 20, 2026, @lyraxana wrote: “Anthropic is currently stealth testing Opus 5.5 (claude-opus-5-5) under the codename claude-wafer-eap which is planned to be released on Tuesday.” By 19:09 UTC the post had 233,000 views. In the seven hours around it, a second account posted a price sheet, a third amplified the leak, and the first demo of the model’s output was retracted by its own poster as footage lifted from YouTube. Anthropic has published nothing: no post, no identifier, no card, no price. This page does what our Opus 5.2, Fable 5.2 and Opus 5.1 trackers do: every claim dated, the sources separated from the accounts repeating them, the company’s own surfaces checked and named, and the page rewritten on this URL the day Anthropic moves. Times are UTC.

On this page · 12 sectionsOpen
  1. What happened on September 20
  2. The leaked price sheet against Anthropic’s live prices
  3. The demo that was not
  4. What Anthropic’s surfaces say
  5. Why 5.5
  6. What Anthropic’s own rhythm says
  7. What the market says
  8. What would confirm it
  9. Where CellCog stands
  10. What we are watching for
  11. Update log
  12. Sources
Key points7 · 13 min full read
  1. A filing cabinet with one drawer open and empty.
    Claude Opus 5.5 does not exist in any Anthropic document as of 19:10 UTC on September 20, 2026. The model documentation lists Claude Fable 5.1, Claude Opus 5, Claude Sonnet 5 and Claude Haiku 4.5; the platform release notes stop at September 18; OpenRouter’s 27 Anthropic identifiers end at claude-opus-5.
  2. A single coral megaphone with three sound arcs.
    The name comes from one leaker. At 13:43 UTC @lyraxana wrote that Anthropic is stealth testing an identifier, claude-opus-5-5, under the codename claude-wafer-eap, planned for release on Tuesday, September 22. The post had 233,000 views by 19:09 UTC and Anthropic has said nothing.
  3. A label on a crate with a number crossed out and a new number written above it.
    The 5.5 is the 5.2 rumor renamed. The account that first posted Opus 5.5 output wrote at 13:25 UTC that it had to be Opus 5.2 but the internal code changed to 5.5 in a recent leak. Our Opus 5.2 tracker holds the six days of routing claims that came before this one.
  4. A price tag reading 20 beside a slightly taller tag reading 25.
    A leaked price sheet followed at 15:30 UTC from @synaptized: $4 per million input tokens, $20 output, $0.20 cache read, $5 cache write. Every figure is exactly 20 percent below Claude Opus 5’s list price except the cache read, which is 60 percent below. It is unverified.
  5. A film frame with a red diagonal strike through it.
    The first demo was fake by its own poster’s account. The Waymo 3D render posted at 12:38 UTC as Opus 5.5 output was retracted at 19:00 UTC: the footage came from a YouTube video uploaded on September 18. The retraction had 372 views against the original’s 18,000.
  6. A calendar strip with four marked days and a fifth day dashed.
    Anthropic’s 2026 cadence: Fable 5 June 9, Sonnet 5 June 30, Opus 5 July 24, Fable 5.1 September 1, gaps of 21, 24 and 39 days. An Opus 5.5 on September 22 would land 21 days after Fable 5.1 and 60 after Opus 5, inside the range, which is why the date is plausible and still unsourced.
  7. A clipboard with five empty checkboxes.
    This is a living tracker. An entry on anthropic.com/news, a claude-opus-5-5 identifier in the model documentation, a system card, a provider catalog line or a dated Anthropic statement flips this page into a record with a graded scorecard of every claim above, on this URL.

§ 01What happened on September 20

The 5.5 did not arrive as a fresh rumor. Six days earlier, one account had reported Opus 5 in Claude Code routing to a newer model it called Opus 5.2, with a Thursday-or-Friday date that closed empty on September 18; our Opus 5.2 tracker holds that chain. On Sunday morning the same story changed numbers.

Time (UTC) Event Source
12:38 A 3D Waymo render posted as Opus 5.5 output from Claude Code; 18,184 views by 19:11 @HarshithLucky3 on X
13:25 The same account: it had to be Opus 5.2 but a recent leak changed the internal code to 5.5 @HarshithLucky3 on X
13:43 The leak: stealth testing claude-opus-5-5, codename claude-wafer-eap, release planned for Tuesday; 233,671 views by 19:09 @lyraxana on X
13:47 Opus 5.5 is coming on Tuesday, alongside something from OpenAI @HarshithLucky3 on X
15:30 A price sheet: $4 input, $20 output, $0.20 cache read, $5 cache write per million tokens; 191,996 views by 19:11 @synaptized on X
15:32 A companion claim: context window decreased from 936k to 872k @synaptized on X
15:53 Amplification: a new checkpoint for the upcoming Opus update, now version 5.5, release potentially as early as Tuesday; 61,052 views @kimmonismus on X
16:05 The price sheet set beside Opus 5’s list prices, called a very good move if true @HarshithLucky3 on X
17:13 A cost claim: the Waymo render made for $27.39 on the leaked prices vs $50.56 on Opus 5 @HarshithLucky3 on X
19:00 Retraction: the Waymo render was fake, the video stolen from a September 18 YouTube upload; 372 views by 19:12 @HarshithLucky3 on X
19:10 Anthropic’s model documentation, release notes, pricing, status page and OpenRouter catalog: no Opus 5.5 Our read
Table 1The Opus 5.5 chain, September 20, 2026, times from the post ids
Six hours and forty minutes on September 20, 2026, in UTCTimeline of September 20, 2026 in UTC: the 12:38 Waymo render, the 13:43 leak naming the identifier highlighted, the 15:30 price sheet, the 15:53 amplification, and the 19:00 retraction of the render as fake12:38Waymo render posted as Opus 5.5 output13:43Leaker names claude-opus-5-5, Tuesday15:30Price sheet: 4 in, 20 out15:53Amplified to 61,000 views19:00Render retracted as stolen footageSix hours and forty minutes on September 20, 2026, in UTCTimeline of September 20, 2026 in UTC: the 12:38 Waymo render, the 13:43 leak naming the identifier highlighted, the 15:30 price sheet, the 15:53 amplification, and the 19:00 retraction of the render as fake12:38Waymo render posted as Opus 5.5 output13:43Leaker names claude-opus-5-5, Tuesday15:30Price sheet: 4 in, 20 out15:53Amplified to 61,000 views19:00Render retracted as stolen footage
Fig 1Six hours and forty minutes on September 20, 2026, in UTC

The renaming is the most useful fact in the table. At 13:25 the account that had been calling the model Opus 5.2 wrote: “in recent leak it internal code changes to opus 5.5”. Same routing claims, same recall-prompt tests, same Claude Code sessions, new number. Whatever is or is not being served behind the Opus 5 identifier, the name attached to it on X is a leaker’s label, not a document.

§ 02The leaked price sheet against Anthropic’s live prices

@synaptized posted four numbers at 15:30 UTC: “Input per Mtok: 4$”, “Output per Mtok: 20$”, cache read 0.2, cache write 5. Anthropic’s pricing page, read at 19:10 UTC, lists no Opus 5.5. It does list the model the sheet is implicitly priced against.

Model Input 5-minute cache write Cache hit Output Source
Claude Fable 5.1 $10 $12.50 $0.25 $50 Anthropic pricing page
Claude Opus 5 $5 $6.25 $0.50 $25 Anthropic pricing page
Claude Sonnet 5 $2 $2.50 $0.20 $10 Anthropic pricing page
Opus 5.5, leaked $4 $5 $0.20 $20 @synaptized on X, unverified
Scroll to compare all columns
Table 2Anthropic list prices per million tokens, read September 20, 2026, and the leaked sheet
Output price per million tokens, Anthropic list vs the leaked sheetBar chart of output price per million tokens: Sonnet 5 at 10, the leaked Opus 5.5 figure of 20 highlighted, Opus 5 at 25, Fable 5.1 at 50Sonnet 510Opus 5.5, leaked20Opus 525Fable 5.150Output price per million tokens, Anthropic list vs the leaked sheetBar chart of output price per million tokens: Sonnet 5 at 10, the leaked Opus 5.5 figure of 20 highlighted, Opus 5 at 25, Fable 5.1 at 50Sonnet 510Opus 5.5, leaked20Opus 525Fable 5.150
Fig 2Output price per million tokens, Anthropic list vs the leaked sheet

Three of the four leaked figures are exactly 80 percent of Opus 5’s: input, output and the 5-minute cache write. The cache read is 40 percent of Opus 5’s and equal to Sonnet 5’s. That pattern is consistent with a real 20 percent price cut and equally consistent with someone taking 20 percent off a public table. The companion claim, “Also the context window has been decreased from 936k to 872k”, helps less than it seems: Anthropic documents Opus 5 at a 1M-token context window, so 936k matches nothing Anthropic has published and 872k matches nothing either. Neither number comes with a screenshot of a model list or a document.

§ 03The demo that was not

The story’s first artifact was a video: a 3D render of a Waymo Jaguar I-PACE, posted at 12:38 UTC as Opus 5.5 output from Claude Code, with the judgment that it beat Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 Astra. By 17:13 UTC a follow-up had priced the render on the leaked sheet. At 19:00 UTC the same account posted “This is Fake Opus 5.5 output” and “He stole the video from YouTube”, crediting a reply and linking a video uploaded on September 18 by a channel that tests coding agents on game builds. The retraction had 372 views at 19:12; the original had 18,184.

Two things to hold from that. The render told you nothing about Opus 5.5 even before the retraction: Claude does not generate raster images or video, and a screenshot of a rendered 3D model is a screenshot of whatever tool rendered it. And the leak, the price sheet and the demo arrived from three different accounts within three hours, which reads as a story assembling itself on a Sunday rather than one source with one document.

§ 04What Anthropic’s surfaces say

Surface Finding
Model documentation overview Four current models: Claude Fable 5.1, Claude Opus 5, Claude Sonnet 5, Claude Haiku 4.5; newest Opus identifier claude-opus-5; no opus-5-5, no wafer
Platform release notes Newest entry September 18, 2026
Pricing page Fable 5.1, Opus 5, Sonnet 5 and Haiku rows; no Opus 5.5
News sitemap Newest entry September 18 (Accenture embedded evaluation)
Status page All systems operational, no incidents
OpenRouter, Anthropic catalog 27 identifiers; Opus line runs claude-opus-4, 4.1, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 4.8, 5; no 5.5
Reuters, September 19, 00:05 UTC Anthropic “is considering rolling out a new AI model to counter OpenAI’s momentum since its launch of GPT-6 Astra”; three sources; no name, no date
Table 3Anthropic and provider surfaces, read September 20, 2026, 19:10 UTC

The Reuters report is the one piece of this that does not come from X, and it names nothing. A new Anthropic model under consideration is compatible with an Opus 5.5 on Tuesday, with an Opus 5.2 on September 30, with a Fable 5.2 in October, and with none of them.

§ 05Why 5.5

Nobody in the chain has said why the number jumped. Anthropic’s own Opus identifiers on OpenRouter run 4, 4.1, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 4.8 and 5, so a skip from 4.1 to 4.5 has a precedent and a skip from 5 to 5.5 would not be the first of its kind. Anthropic’s only 5.1 is Claude Fable 5.1, which is a different line. What the jump does say is that the number has moved twice in six days without any Anthropic document moving once, which is the definition of a rumor’s number rather than a product’s.

§ 06What Anthropic’s own rhythm says

Model Released Days since previous
Claude Fable 5 (with Mythos 5) June 9, 2026 first of the line
Claude Sonnet 5 June 30, 2026 21
Claude Opus 5 July 24, 2026 24
Claude Fable 5.1 (with Mythos 5.1) September 1, 2026 39
Opus 5.5, if September 22 as leaked rumored 21 (60 after Opus 5)
Table 4Anthropic model releases in 2026 and the gap since the previous release

A September 22 release would sit at the short end of the year’s gaps and at 60 days after Opus 5, which is the same distance Opus 5 sat from Fable 5 (45 days) plus two weeks. The rhythm makes the date plausible. It does not make it sourced.

§ 07What the market says

Question Yes price Volume
By September 20, 2026 0.1% $17.1k
By September 24, 2026 73.5% $21.7k
By September 27, 2026 79% $26.6k
By September 30, 2026 89% $96.1k
By October 31, 2026 94.2% $14.6k
By December 31, 2026 97.8% $5.3k
Table 5Polymarket, Next Claude Opus released by…?, read 19:12 UTC September 20, 2026

The September 30 market has moved from 80 percent on September 14 to 89 percent today, on the posts above. That is a read on how many people believe the leaker, not evidence of a model.

§ 08What would confirm it

Five things, any one of which flips this page from tracker to record:

  • An entry on anthropic.com/news, where Opus 5, Sonnet 5 and Fable 5.1 all appeared on their release days.
  • A claude-opus-5-5 identifier in Anthropic’s model documentation, beside claude-opus-5.
  • A system card at anthropic.com/system-cards.
  • A catalog line on a provider: Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud, Microsoft Foundry or OpenRouter.
  • A dated statement from Anthropic naming the model.

What would not confirm it: a rendered image, a price sheet without a page, a codename, a second account repeating the first, or a prediction market moving on the posts.

§ 09Where CellCog stands

Our conflict, declared: we build CellCog, a platform where a business hires AI employees that keep memory and work as a team, and we choose the models underneath them. Our Creative tier runs on Claude Opus 5; our Core and Max tiers run on Claude Fable 5.1, moved there on its release day. If Anthropic ships an Opus 5.5 at the leaked price, a 20 percent cut on the Creative tier’s engine is a same-day routing decision made on its price, its context window and its behavior on long creative runs. If it ships at a different price, or under a different name, the decision is the same one with different inputs. This page flips on the same URL when that day comes.

§ 10What we are watching for

  • Tuesday, September 22, from 00:00 UTC: anthropic.com/news, the model documentation and the release notes, read on every scan.
  • Provider catalogs (Bedrock, Vertex, Foundry, OpenRouter) for any new claude-opus identifier.
  • The leaker’s next post, and whether Tuesday is revised the way Thursday-or-Friday was.
  • A checkable artifact behind the codename: a model-list screenshot, an API error naming claude-wafer-eap, a traffic report.
  • Anthropic saying anything at all.

§ 11Update log

This is a living page; when the story moves, the update lands here.

As of September 20, 2026, 19:15 UTC: page opened. Every X post read directly in a browser and its time computed from the post id; Anthropic’s model documentation, release notes, pricing page, status page and OpenRouter’s Anthropic catalog read at 19:10 UTC; Polymarket read at 19:12 UTC. No official movement to log.

§ 12Sources

Frequently asked6 questions

Q1Has Anthropic announced Claude Opus 5.5?

No. We read Anthropic’s model documentation, the platform release notes, the pricing page, the status page and the Anthropic catalog on OpenRouter at 19:10 UTC on September 20, 2026. None contains Opus 5.5, a claude-opus-5-5 identifier or the word wafer. The documentation lists four current models: Claude Fable 5.1, Claude Opus 5, Claude Sonnet 5 and Claude Haiku 4.5.

Q2What happened to Opus 5.2?

It is the same rumor with a different number. From September 14 one account reported Opus 5 in Claude Code routing to a newer model it called Opus 5.2, with a Thursday-or-Friday date that closed empty on September 18. On September 20 the accounts carrying the story switched to 5.5, one of them saying the internal code changed in a recent leak. Our Opus 5.2 tracker holds that chain, dated.

Q3Is the leaked price sheet credible?

It is unverified and it is tidy. Three of the four figures are exactly 80 percent of Claude Opus 5’s list prices, which is either a real 20 percent cut or a sheet built by taking 20 percent off. A companion post said the context window shrank from 936k to 872k tokens; Anthropic documents Opus 5 at 1M tokens, so neither figure matches any published Anthropic number.

Q4Why 5.5 and not 5.1 or 5.2?

Nobody has said. Anthropic’s Opus identifiers on OpenRouter run 4, 4.1, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 4.8 and 5, so a jump from 4.1 to 4.5 has happened before and a jump from 5 to 5.5 would not be unprecedented. Anthropic’s only 5.1 is Claude Fable 5.1. The number is a leaker’s claim until Anthropic publishes one.

Q5How often does Anthropic ship a new model?

In 2026 so far: Claude Fable 5 on June 9, Claude Sonnet 5 on June 30, Claude Opus 5 on July 24 and Claude Fable 5.1 on September 1, gaps of 21, 24 and 39 days. An Opus release on September 22 would come 21 days after Fable 5.1 and 60 days after Opus 5, both inside the year’s range.

Q6Should I wait for Opus 5.5?

Not on this evidence. Claude Opus 5 is live at $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output with a 1M-token context, and a 5.5 would arrive as a new identifier when it ships. If you are choosing where your agents run rather than which API to call, the model matters less than the layer around it: memory that survives the conversation, a task board, an inbox, approvals. CellCog’s Creative tier runs on Opus 5 today, Core and Max on Fable 5.1, and a standing AI employee keeps its role across every engine swap. Try it free, no credit card needed; you pay for the work, not the hire, and the cost depends purely on how much work you assign.

Published 20 September 2026 All Choosing a platform →