Claude Opus 5.5: free or paid, API price and access

There is no free Claude Opus 5.5. The Free plan does not include it, access starts with Pro, and through the API Anthropic asks $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens. A Russian card works for neither the subscription nor the Anthropic API. What is left for a developer is an API gateway that takes rubles.

What Claude Opus 5.5 is

Opus 5.5 is built for long agent runs over code and knowledge work. Anthropic released it on 22 September 2026 as the first model of the 5.5 line; Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku 5.5 followed (Haiku on 7 October). Parameters from the model page in the docs:

• a 1M-token context and responses of up to 128K tokens;
• knowledge current to June 2026;
• adaptive thinking is always on and cannot be switched off, and the effort parameter sets how deep it goes (medium by default);
• forcing a tool call returns an error;
• Anthropic promises not to retire the model before 22 September 2027.

For a budget, something else matters more. Anthropic says that on typical workloads with default settings Opus 5.5 comes out 40% cheaper than Opus 5. That figure is the vendor's own (announcement) and we did not check it. The direct price cut is smaller: $4 and $20 instead of $5 and $25, which is 20%. The rest, Anthropic says, comes from cheaper cache reads and fewer tokens spent per task. Whether that holds for your code, only a measurement on your code will show.

Opus versions: what is current and what is legacy

A search for "claude opus" with no number covers every generation. Here is how they stand on 29 October 2026, according to Anthropic's docs and the codexkey catalog.

Prices per 1M tokens. Anthropic has retired Opus 4 and 4.1. codexkey prices are for 29 October 2026, premium channel; current figures are on the models page. Sticking with an older Opus makes sense when a stable prompt and passing tests are built on it. On new projects take 5.5, since it is cheaper.

Claude Opus 5.5 for free: what is actually true

In short, there is no free Opus. These are the places people usually look.

• The Free plan on claude.ai. The pricing page gives Free users Sonnet and Haiku; Opus and Claude Code are not part of it.
• A trial or a promo code. For Opus 5.5 we found nothing of the kind on the pricing pages or in the help center.
• Max and Team. The plans are paid, but they come with monthly API credits: $100 on Max 5x, $200 on Max 20x, and a shared pool of up to $500 a month on Team.
• Free keys from forums and repositories. This is the riskiest route. The owner of a leaked key will revoke it sooner or later, and anything you sent through someone else's key can be read by strangers. A word on searches like "download claude opus 5.5": there is no model file, Opus exists only as a service.

If the bill has to be zero, there are two honest options: the free Sonnet on Free, or free models from other vendors. The codexkey catalog lists deepseek-v4.1-flash-1017-free, minimax-m3-free and qwen3.8-flash-free at zero price. They are not Claude, so check limits and terms on the models page. The article Claude Code for free: what works explains how to connect such models to Claude Code.

How much Claude Opus 5.5 costs

Other Anthropic prices per 1M tokens: a 5-minute cache write is $5, a one-hour write $8, a cache read $0.20, and Batch API takes 50% off. Fast mode in Claude Code and the API is billed separately; the announcement names $8 and $40.

Now the arithmetic on an example. An ordinary request: 50 thousand input tokens and 4 thousand output tokens, no cache. At Anthropic that is 0.05 × $4 + 0.004 × $20 = $0.28. At the codexkey price list, 0.05 × $0.86 + 0.004 × $4.32 comes to about $0.06. An agent session of 1M input and 50K output tokens costs $5.00 at Anthropic and roughly $1.08 at codexkey. The assumptions are rough: real tasks burn twice as many tokens or half as many, so lean on your own statistics.

A subscription is counted differently. Pro costs $17 a month when paid for a year ($200 up front) or $20 month to month, Max 5x $100, Max 20x $200. Claude Code draws tokens from the same limit as chat. The piece Pro, Max or API sets the subscription against pay-per-token, and every plan is broken down in how much a Claude subscription costs.

How to pay less for Opus

There are four levers. The first three are in Anthropic's documentation. Cache: a read costs 5% of the input price, $0.20 against $4, so long repeated prefixes are worth caching (details in the article on prompt caching). Effort: it defaults to medium in the API, and for simple tasks you can lower it further. Batch API takes off 50% when the answer does not have to be instant. The fourth lever is our own advice: give routine work to Sonnet and save Opus for the hard steps.

How to buy Claude Opus 5.5: subscription or API

We advise against faking your country to get around the restrictions: the account can be blocked, and a VPN does not fix payment. A full walkthrough of access and payment is in Claude API from Russia without a VPN.

Opus 5.5 in Claude Code through codexkey

codexkey does not sell Claude subscriptions and does not open claude.ai: it is API access to models. You get a key, pay with a Russian bank card, through SBP (the Russian Faster Payments System) or in crypto, and connect your agents. Claude Code is configured in ~/.claude/settings.json, and the address goes in without /v1:

{
  "env": {
    "ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL": "https://api.codexkey.online",
    "ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN": "sk_cdx_YOUR_KEY",
    "ANTHROPIC_MODEL": "claude-opus-5-5[1m]",
    "ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_OPUS_MODEL": "claude-opus-5-5[1m]",
    "ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_SONNET_MODEL": "claude-sonnet-5[1m]",
    "ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_HAIKU_MODEL": "claude-sonnet-5",
    "CLAUDE_CODE_SUBAGENT_MODEL": "claude-sonnet-5"
  }
}

The [1m] suffix opens a 1M-token window for Claude Code. The ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_* lines are required: without them the program asks for its own default models and returns a model-selection error. Once claude is running, /model switches the model. At Anthropic, Claude Code on subscriptions and the API already defaults to Opus 5.5, but through a gateway you choose the model yourself. More in the Claude Code guide and in Claude Code: installation, payment and pricing.

We would not assign Opus to every role at once. Keep Sonnet for routine work and subagents, and bring in Opus to read an unfamiliar repository or make hard edits. The selection criteria are in Opus 5.5, Sonnet and Fable.

Opus 6 and Opus 5.6: what is known

Searches for "claude opus 6" and "claude opus 5.6" appeared before any announcement. Anthropic's model overview lists Fable 5.1, Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku 5.5 as of 29 October 2026. Opus 6 and Opus 5.6 are not there and are not officially confirmed. Rumors are no basis for plans. When a new version ships, Anthropic publishes a model page with the ID and the price, and that is the moment to check.

FAQ

Is there a way to get Claude Opus 5.5 for free?

We found no legitimate free route. Opus is unavailable on the Free plan, and the documentation lists no trial for Opus 5.5. Free keys and "cracked" accounts are unsafe, so keep away from them.

How much does Claude Opus 5.5 cost through the API?

Anthropic charges $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens, and a cache read costs $0.20. At the codexkey price list on 29 October 2026 the model claude-opus-5-5 costs $0.86 and $4.32, with a cache read at $0.1. Check the models page for current figures.

Where can I buy Claude Opus 5.5 from Russia?

An Anthropic subscription cannot be set up from Russia: the country is not on the supported list. At codexkey you can buy API access to claude-opus-5-5: you get a key and pay in rubles by a Russian card, SBP or crypto, with no VPN. We do not sell Claude Pro or Max subscriptions.

How is Opus 5.5 different from Opus 5?

It is cheaper: $4 and $20 instead of $5 and $25, and a cache read costs $0.20 instead of $0.50. Anthropic puts the saving on typical workloads at 40%. Thinking cannot be turned off, and forcing a tool call returns an error.

Can I download Claude Opus 5.5?

Not the model itself: Opus runs as a service in chat, in the API and in the clouds. What you can download are the Claude Desktop and mobile apps from Anthropic's pages. Steer clear of any "Opus 5.5 installer" on third-party sites.

Does Claude Opus work in Russia without a VPN?

The claude.ai site and Anthropic subscriptions do not work from Russia. The codexkey API works without a VPN: claude-opus-5-5 is available under a key, and you can connect it to Claude Code, Cursor or your own programs.