claude-opus-4-0 — pricing, context window and limits

Deprecated, no retirement date yet, and the highest legacy price point

Like Sonnet 4, this model is deprecated with no retirement date announced, and its per-token pricing — both input and output — sits well above every model currently recommended for new work. There's no cost argument for staying on this id even setting the deprecation itself aside.

The same missing thinking-control mechanism

This model predates the effort parameter, using the older thinking-budget approach instead — see migrating off budget_tokens to the effort parameter for what that transition actually involves once you move to a current model.

Why "no date yet" deserves urgency, not patience

A deprecated model with an announced retirement date at least gives you a deadline to plan around. One without a date gives you no forcing function at all, which paradoxically makes it easier to deprioritise the migration indefinitely — right up until a date does get announced and the actual runway turns out to be considerably shorter than the calendar had suggested it would be.

The cost case for migrating is unusually clear here

Between the price gap alone and the deprecated, undated status, this is one of the more straightforward migration decisions in the lineup — there's little reason to weigh capability trade-offs carefully when both cost and lifecycle point the same direction this firmly.

Related

See claude-opus-5 for the documented successor, and the model is deprecated but has no retirement date yet for the fuller reasoning on why this category of model deserves active migration now.