Cheapest Claude Opus 5 API: XCLI is 98% below the official price
Claude Opus 5 costs $5.00/$25 per 1M tokens from Anthropic. The cheapest quote is XCLI: $0.100 in, $0.500 out. Full table and buying checklist below.
| # | Provider | 1M input | 1M output | Discount | Tokens per $100 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | Official list | $5.00 | $25.00 | 0% | 12.0M |
| 1 | $0.100 | $0.500 | −98% | 600M | |
| 2 | $0.450 | $2.25 | −91% | 133M | |
| 3 | $0.450 | $2.25 | −91% | 133M | |
| 4 | $0.750 | $3.75 | −85% | 80.0M | |
| 5 | $0.750 | $3.75 | −85% | 80.0M | |
| 6 | $0.750 | $3.75 | −85% | 80.0M | |
| 7 | $5.80 | $28.98 | — | 10.4M |
Tokens per $100 assume a “code” mix: 5 input tokens per output token. Prices are crawled; verify them on the provider page before buying.
What to check before buying
- Test the key with the free API checker — it verifies the endpoint responds, without sending tokens.
- Compare the blended cost for your workload, not just the input price: output tokens dominate in agent workloads.
- Check uptime and minimum top-up: the cheapest provider is useless if it is down half the day.