The included-access window Anthropic reopened for Fable 5 after the July 1 restoration — up to 50% of weekly Pro/Max/Team/select-Enterprise limits, no credits required — closes tonight. It was supposed to end July 7; a same-day extension bought five more days. Starting tomorrow, everyone over the free share pays the rate this site quoted at launch back in June.
- 01Two windows, one real cliff.June’s free run (Jun 9–22) never played out — the export-control ban zeroed it on day 3. The window reopened July 1 is the one actually expiring tonight, and the first time metered billing will hit anyone who didn’t deliberately opt into paid credits.
- 02The extension bought runway, not a lower price.Five extra days changes nothing on tomorrow’s invoice — $10 in, $50 out per million tokens is the number Anthropic put on Fable 5 in June, untouched by either grace period.
- 03It’s the most expensive generally-available rate Anthropic publishes. 5× Sonnet 5’s current introductory price on both ends of the token, and — by the “exactly double” framing this site used in June — 2× its closest sibling, Opus 4.8.
01 What closes tonight
Two weeks ago, writing up Sonnet 5’s launch week, I logged July 7 as the day “the restored flagship’s 50%-of-weekly-limits window closes for Pro, Max, and Team plans.” It didn’t close on schedule. On July 7, Anthropic extended the included-access window five more days, to tonight. That’s the window this piece is about — not the pricing itself, which hasn’t moved since Fable 5 shipped, but the runway Anthropic keeps stretching in front of it.
Since Fable 5 came back online on July 1, Pro, Max, Team, and select Enterprise seats have been able to burn through up to half their weekly usage limits on Fable 5 at no extra charge. That share doesn’t reset tonight — it disappears. From tomorrow, every token past whatever’s left of a plan’s normal weekly allowance comes out of prepaid usage credits, billed at the rate Anthropic has quoted since launch.
None of this is a surprise announcement. Anthropic named July 13 as the metering start date the same day it announced the extension, on July 7. What’s new tonight is just the arithmetic finally coming due — for a much larger population than the first time this cliff was scheduled, back in June, before an export-control letter made the question moot for three weeks.
02 The price, measured
Fable 5’s sticker price isn’t new information — this site published it the day the model launched: $10 per million input tokens, $50 per million output tokens, “exactly double Opus 4.8.” What changes tonight is who actually pays it. Lined up against the other prices this catalog has quoted this month, it’s the steepest rate on the board by a wide margin.
$ per million output tokens
Sticker price · routing table, as published this month
Opus 4.8’s $25 is not separately published — it’s derived from Anthropic’s own “exactly double Opus 4.8” framing for Fable 5. Sonnet 5 figures are sticker prices before its ~1.3× tokenizer adjustment (see the Sonnet 5 piece for the effective-cost version).
The multiple holds on the input side too: $10 against Sonnet 5’s $2 introductory rate is also a 5× spread, narrowing to roughly 3.3× once Sonnet’s standard $3/$15 pricing takes over on August 31. Nothing about tonight’s cliff changes that ratio — it just widens who’s paying it.
Two windows, one blackout
Fable 5 launches
A free run for Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise, announced through June 22 — thirteen days, on paper.
Window 1The letter — models go dark
An export-control letter pulls Fable 5 and Mythos 5 offline worldwide, three days into the planned free window. The full story is here.
BlackoutCommerce lifts the controls
Nineteen days dark. Restoration begins the next day.
Fable 5 returns; Window 2 opens
A fresh included-access window: up to 50% of weekly Pro/Max/Team/select-Enterprise limits, running through Jul 7. Restoration recap.
Window 2Hours from the cutoff, Anthropic extends
The included window is pushed five more days, to Jul 12 — the same day this site’s Sonnet 5 piece had logged as the original close date.
ExtendedThe window closes
Included Fable 5 access ends for Pro, Max, Team, and select Enterprise seats.
TodayMetering begins
Usage past a plan’s normal weekly limit draws on prepaid credits at $10/$50 per million tokens — the rate published since launch.
TomorrowWho actually pays
Subscription seats
Cliff, tonightPro, Max, Team, and select Enterprise plans are the ones the included window applied to. For them, tonight is the first time Fable 5’s real price becomes visible on a bill rather than absorbed into a flat subscription.
API / Platform accounts
No cliff — already meteredDevelopers building against the Claude Platform were never inside the included window at all. They’ve been paying $10/$50 per million tokens since Fable 5 first shipped in June; tonight changes nothing for them.
The asymmetry is the whole story in one line: the included window was always a subscription-side courtesy layered on top of a price that API customers have paid the entire time. Tonight doesn’t introduce a new number. It just retires the discount that made most subscribers not need to know the number yet.
03 My read
Read charitably, this is a company making evaluators whole for an outage its own regulatory environment caused: the ban ate 19 days of the free window teams had planned their testing around, so Anthropic gave some of that runway back, then gave five more days on top when the first replacement date arrived. That’s a defensible, even generous, response to a disruption that wasn’t Anthropic’s fault to begin with.
Read less charitably, free evaluation windows are also how you get teams to build production workflows around a model before its metered price is the number a budget owner actually has to sign off on. Two windows in, most Fable 5 users still haven’t paid the sticker price for a sustained workload — they’ve paid it for, at most, the slice of a week that spilled past 50% of their limit. Tonight is the first night that stops being true for whoever’s still routing real traffic to Fable 5 by morning.
Neither reading requires the other to be wrong. Both can be true at once, and probably are: a real courtesy extended to teams an outage inconvenienced, running on the same rails as a rate Anthropic always intended everyone to pay eventually. Tonight is just where the two readings stop being distinguishable from the outside.
What to do before midnight
Burn down anything queued, today
Batch jobs or eval runs still sitting behind Fable 5 cost nothing right now if they fit inside what’s left of this week’s free share. The same tokens tomorrow are $10/$50 per million — clear the queue before the window closes rather than after.
Re-run the June sizing math with the real ratio
The routing advice from launch still holds: reserve Fable 5 for work where the quality gap earns back roughly double Opus 4.8’s spend. That math didn’t change tonight — it just now applies to every token, not just the half you were paying for anyway.
Check your weekly-limit math, not just the calendar
The free share was capped at up to 50% of weekly plan limits. If other usage this week already pushed you past that share, the meter effectively started for you days before tonight’s cliff — check your usage dashboard, not just the date.
Build $10/$50 into your standing cost model
This is the second grace period, not the first — three days in June, twelve now. A third arriving on schedule isn’t guaranteed. Treat tonight’s rate as the real number, not a provisional one still waiting to be extended again.
- The Opus 4.8 dollar figures here are derived, not separately published. Anthropic’s own copy states Fable 5 is priced “exactly double Opus 4.8” — the $5 in / $25 out implied by that ratio isn’t independently confirmed as Opus 4.8’s current published rate.
- No source specifies the exact hour the window closes.Anthropic and reporting agree on July 12 as the day; “tonight” is used loosely here, not to the minute.
- June’s free-window terms, as reported, didn’t specify a 50% cap. The explicit “up to 50% of weekly limits” ceiling is documented for the window that reopened July 1; June’s original terms were reported simply as free through June 22.
- Sonnet 5’s tokenizer adjustment doesn’t apply to the Fable 5 figures here.The ~1.3× effective-cost multiplier from the Sonnet 5 piece is Sonnet-specific; Fable 5’s $10/$50 are quoted as sticker rates, with no equivalent published adjustment.
- This is a fast-moving billing story; status is current as of July 12, 2026.