What is Claude Opus 4.8 built for?

Anthropic positions Claude Opus 4.8 for long-horizon agentic execution: complex, multi-step coding work and knowledge-work writing where the model needs to maintain coherence across many turns and produce clearer prose.

How do I configure adaptive thinking and effort for Claude Opus 4.8 in the AI SDK?

Set the model to `anthropic/claude-opus-4.8`. Under `providerOptions.anthropic`, set `thinking` to `{ type: 'adaptive' }` and pass an `effort` level (for example, `'high'`).

What knowledge-work tasks does Claude Opus 4.8 target?

Drafting, data analysis, and building presentations. Anthropic describes the prose output as clearer and less hedgy, which makes drafts more useful as a starting point.

Does AI Gateway support Zero Data Retention for Claude Opus 4.8?

Yes, Zero Data Retention is available for this model. Zero Data Retention is offered on a per-provider basis. See https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/capabilities/zdr for details.

What is the pricing for Claude Opus 4.8?

AI Gateway mirrors provider pricing with no markup and adds no platform fee on inference. Rates are listed on this page and shift when providers update their pricing.

Anthropic

Claude Opus 4.8

Claude Opus 4.8 targets long-horizon agentic execution, complex multi-step coding including mid-task refactors, and knowledge-work writing with clearer, less hedgy prose. It is available on AI Gateway via Anthropic, Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, Claude Platform on AWS with adaptive thinking and configurable effort. Your use is subject to Anthropic's Terms & Privacy Policies.

View API reference

Input and output price: Prices from: Input $5, Output $25, Per 1M tokens
24h uptime: Loading AI Gateway uptime

Get API key Read the docs

import { streamText } from 'ai'

const result = streamText({
  model: 'anthropic/claude-opus-4.8',
  prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?'
})

Read docs

Overview Playground Providers Uptime Status Throughput Latency API Similar About FAQ

Copy link to headingPlayground

Try out Claude Opus 4.8 by Anthropic. Usage is billed to your team at API rates. Free users (those who haven't made a payment) get $5 of credits every 30 days.

Claude Opus 4.8

Copy link to headingProviders

Route requests across multiple providers. Copy a provider slug to set your preference. Visit the docs for more info. Using a provider means you agree to their terms, listed under Legal.

Provider

Context	Max Output	Latency	Throughput	Input	Output	Cache	Web Search	Capabilities	ZDR	No Training	Regional Inference	Free Tier	Release Date

Anthropic

Legal:Terms•Privacy

128K

2.1 s

73 tps

$5/M+2 more

$25/M+2 more

Read$0.50/M

Write$6.25/M

$10/K

05/28/2026

Bedrock

Legal:Terms•Privacy

128K

8.0 s

83 tps

$5/M+2 more

$25/M+2 more

Read$0.50/M

Write$6.25/M

$10/K

05/28/2026

Google Vertex AI

Legal:Terms•Privacy

128K

0.7 s

87 tps

$5/M+2 more

$25/M+2 more

Read$0.50/M

Write$6.25/M

$10/K

05/28/2026

Claude Platform on AWS

Legal:Terms•Privacy

128K

2.9 s

107 tps

$5/M

$25/M

Read$0.50/M

Write$6.25/M

$10/K

05/28/2026

Getting started

Call Claude Opus 4.8 through AI Gateway with the AI SDK generateText and streamText functions, or through the OpenAI Chat Completions, OpenAI Responses, and Anthropic Messages APIs by changing the base URL. AI Gateway authenticates the request and routes it to an available provider.

Install the AI SDK (pnpm add ai dotenv), create an API key from the API Keys page, and set it as AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY in your environment. Full setup is covered in the text generation quickstart.

index.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'anthropic/claude-opus-4.8',
    prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?',
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Top-level parameters

The same Claude Opus 4.8 request in each API format AI Gateway supports.

top-level-params.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'anthropic/claude-opus-4.8',
    system: 'You are a concise technical assistant.',
    prompt: 'Summarize the tradeoffs between static generation and SSR.',
    maxOutputTokens: 1024,
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Standard parameters like prompt, messages, temperature, and tools work as documented in the AI SDK docs. These are the parameters with model-specific behavior.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
`model`	`string`	Yes	Model ID in the form `creator/model`, e.g. `anthropic/claude-opus-4.8`. AI Gateway routes the request to an available provider.
`maxOutputTokens`	`number`	No	Hard cap on generated tokens. Claude Opus 4.8 supports up to `128,000` output tokens. Reasoning tokens count toward this limit.
`reasoning`	`'provider-default' \| 'none' \| 'minimal' \| 'low' \| 'medium' \| 'high' \| 'xhigh'`	No	Provider-agnostic reasoning effort, available in AI SDK 7 or later. Maps to the provider’s native reasoning configuration; reasoning settings under `providerOptions` take precedence when both are set. See the Reasoning section below.
`providerOptions`	`Record<string, JSONValue>`	No	AI Gateway routing options under `gateway`, plus any provider-native options under the provider’s own namespace — see the table below.

Input limits

Input	Formats	Sources	Max count	Max size	Limits
Text	—	—	—	—	Prompt and response share the 1M-token context window
Image	—	URL, base64, Uint8Array	—	—	Sent as image parts in messages; counts as input tokens
PDF	—	URL, base64, Uint8Array	—	—	Sent as file parts in messages; counts as input tokens

Provider options

Set AI Gateway routing options under providerOptions.gateway. For provider-specific options, pass them under the provider’s namespace as documented by the AI SDK.

Learn more in the AI SDK anthropic provider docs.

provider-options.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'anthropic/claude-opus-4.8',
    prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?',
    providerOptions: {
      gateway: {
        only: ['anthropic', 'bedrock'],
      },
    },
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

These AI Gateway routing options apply to every model. Provider-specific options pass through under the provider’s own namespace (for example providerOptions.anthropic) exactly as documented by the AI SDK.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
`providerOptions.gateway.only`	`string[]`	No	Restrict routing to these provider slugs. Requests fail over only within the listed providers.
`providerOptions.gateway.order`	`string[]`	No	Preferred provider order. Listed providers are tried first; unlisted providers remain available as fallbacks.
`providerOptions.gateway.sort`	`'cost' \| 'ttft' \| 'tps'`	No	Rank candidate providers by price, time to first token, or tokens per second instead of the default routing order.
`providerOptions.gateway.zeroDataRetention`	`boolean`	No	Route only to providers with a zero-data-retention policy for this model.

Routing across providers

AI Gateway serves the same model through multiple providers and fails over automatically. order expresses a preference while keeping every provider eligible; only is a hard allowlist — if none of the listed providers are available the request fails instead of falling back.

Options under a provider's own namespace (for example providerOptions.anthropic) are forwarded to that provider with the request. Providers ignore option namespaces that don't apply to them, so it is safe to set provider options alongside gateway routing options.

Reasoning

AI Gateway bridges reasoning across every API format. The AI SDK exposes a provider-agnostic top-level reasoning level (none, minimal, low, medium, high, or xhigh); the Chat Completions and Responses formats take the same effort under reasoning.effort; and the Anthropic Messages format uses a native thinking token budget. Whichever you send, the gateway maps it to the target model’s native configuration, converting between effort levels and token budgets as needed. Reasoning-related settings under providerOptions take full precedence over the top-level reasoning value and are never merged. Reasoning tokens typically count toward your output-token usage, though how they’re reported and billed varies by provider.

Learn more in the AI Gateway reasoning guide.

reasoning.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'anthropic/claude-opus-4.8',
    prompt: 'Explain the Monty Hall problem step by step.',
    reasoning: 'high',
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Image input

Send images alongside text as message parts. Images count as input tokens.

image-input.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'anthropic/claude-opus-4.8',
    messages: [
      {
        role: 'user',
        content: [
          { type: 'text', text: 'Describe this image.' },
          { type: 'image', image: 'https://example.com/photo.jpg' },
        ],
      },
    ],
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

PDF input

Attach PDFs as file parts. Their contents count as input tokens.

pdf-input.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'anthropic/claude-opus-4.8',
    messages: [
      {
        role: 'user',
        content: [
          { type: 'text', text: 'Summarize this document.' },
          {
            type: 'file',
            mediaType: 'application/pdf',
            data: 'https://example.com/document.pdf',
          },
        ],
      },
    ],
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Tool calling

Expose tools the model can call. Define each tool’s inputs with a Zod schema.

tool-calling.ts

import { generateText, tool } from 'ai';
import { z } from 'zod';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'anthropic/claude-opus-4.8',
    prompt: 'What is the weather in San Francisco?',
    tools: {
      getWeather: tool({
        description: 'Get the current weather for a location',
        inputSchema: z.object({ location: z.string() }),
        execute: async ({ location }) => ({ location, temperatureC: 18 }),
      }),
    },
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Fast mode

Claude Opus 4.8 can run in fast mode for lower latency by appending -fast to the model ID.

fast-mode.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'anthropic/claude-opus-4.8-fast',
    prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?',
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Copy link to headingMore models by Anthropic

Model

Context	Latency	Throughput	Input	Output	Cache	Web Search	Capabilities	Providers	ZDR	No Training	Free Tier	Release Date

anthropic/claude-fable-5.1

1.2 s

83 tps

$10/M

$50/M

Read$0.25/M

Write$12.50/M

$10/K

08/31/2026

anthropic/claude-opus-5

1.7 s

117 tps

$5/M+1 more

$25/M+1 more

Read$0.50/M

Write$6.25/M

$10/K

07/24/2026

anthropic/claude-sonnet-5

1.5 s

113 tps

$2/M

$10/M

Read$0.20/M

Write$2.50/M

$10/K

06/29/2026

anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6

0.8 s

67 tps

$3/M

$15/M

Read$0.30/M

Write$3.75/M

$10/K

02/17/2026

anthropic/claude-opus-4.6

1.3 s

54 tps

$5/M+1 more

$25/M+1 more

Read$0.50/M

Write$6.25/M

$10/K

02/05/2026

anthropic/claude-haiku-4.5

200K

0.4 s

109 tps

$1/M

$5/M

Read$0.10/M

Write$1.25/M

$10/K

10/15/2025

Copy link to headingAbout Claude Opus 4.8

Claude Opus 4.8 became available on AI Gateway on May 28, 2026. Anthropic positions it for long-horizon agentic execution: complex, multi-step coding workflows where the model maintains coherence across many turns, including refactors that previously required human correction mid-task.

For knowledge-work writing, Claude Opus 4.8 produces clearer, less hedgy prose. Anthropic highlights drafting, data analysis, and building presentations as workflows that benefit from this style. Pair it with structured tool calls or memory files in your agent pipeline to keep extended sessions on track.

The sample integration uses adaptive thinking and configurable effort. Set thinking to { type: 'adaptive' } and effort to 'high' (or another level) under providerOptions.anthropic to control how deeply Claude Opus 4.8 reasons on each request.

Through AI Gateway, Claude Opus 4.8 is available with the standard unified API, observability, retries, and failover across Anthropic, Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, Claude Platform on AWS. Set the model to anthropic/claude-opus-4.8 in the AI SDK, Chat Completions API, Responses API, Messages API, or other API formats, from TypeScript or Python. AI Gateway mirrors provider pricing with no markup and adds no platform fee on inference, including for Bring Your Own Key requests.

Copy link to headingWhat To Consider When Choosing a Provider

Configuration: Adaptive thinking lets Claude Opus 4.8 scale reasoning per request. Pair it with the effort parameter when running mixed workloads so the model spends compute where it pays off and stays efficient on simpler turns.
Zero Data Retention: Zero Data Retention is available for this model. It is offered on a per-provider and model basis. See the documentation for details.
Authentication: AI Gateway authenticates requests using an API key or OIDC token. You do not need to manage provider credentials directly.

Copy link to headingWhen to Use Claude Opus 4.8

Best for

Long-horizon agentic execution: Multi-step pipelines where the model maintains coherence across many turns and tool calls
Complex multi-step coding: Refactors and feature work that previously required human correction mid-task
Knowledge-work writing: Drafting, data analysis, and presentation building where clearer, less hedgy prose matters
Adaptive thinking workloads: Mixed-complexity requests where letting Claude Opus 4.8 calibrate reasoning depth per turn is more efficient than fixed budgets
Production agent infrastructure: Workflows that benefit from AI Gateway routing across Anthropic, Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, Claude Platform on AWS with retries and failover

Consider alternatives when

Cost-sensitive high-volume traffic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 offers Opus-approaching intelligence at Sonnet pricing
Latency-critical interactive use: Claude Haiku 4.5 is faster and cheaper on well-bounded high-throughput requests
Fixed thinking budget required: Claude Opus 4.6 accepts a fixed thinking budget when you need deterministic compute per request

Copy link to headingConclusion

Claude Opus 4.8 extends the Opus line toward long-horizon execution and clearer knowledge-work output. Use it for agent pipelines that run for many turns, refactors that previously required human handholding, and writing tasks where less hedging produces more useful drafts.

Copy link to headingFrequently Asked Questions

What is Claude Opus 4.8 built for?
Anthropic positions Claude Opus 4.8 for long-horizon agentic execution: complex, multi-step coding work and knowledge-work writing where the model needs to maintain coherence across many turns and produce clearer prose.
How do I configure adaptive thinking and effort for Claude Opus 4.8 in the AI SDK?
Set the model to anthropic/claude-opus-4.8. Under providerOptions.anthropic, set thinking to { type: 'adaptive' } and pass an effort level (for example, 'high').
Which providers back Claude Opus 4.8 on AI Gateway?
AI Gateway routes Claude Opus 4.8 through Anthropic, Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, Claude Platform on AWS, with retries and automatic failover.
How is Claude Opus 4.8 useful for coding agents?
Anthropic highlights complex multi-step coding work, including refactors that previously required human correction mid-task. Claude Opus 4.8 is suited for agent pipelines that span many turns and tool calls.
What knowledge-work tasks does Claude Opus 4.8 target?
Drafting, data analysis, and building presentations. Anthropic describes the prose output as clearer and less hedgy, which makes drafts more useful as a starting point.
Does AI Gateway support Zero Data Retention for Claude Opus 4.8?
Yes, Zero Data Retention is available for this model. Zero Data Retention is offered on a per-provider basis. See https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/capabilities/zdr for details.
What is the pricing for Claude Opus 4.8?
AI Gateway mirrors provider pricing with no markup and adds no platform fee on inference. Rates are listed on this page and shift when providers update their pricing.
How do I call Claude Opus 4.8 through AI Gateway?
Set the model to anthropic/claude-opus-4.8 in the AI SDK, Chat Completions API, Responses API, Messages API, or other API formats, from TypeScript or Python. AI Gateway handles authentication, retries, and failover across anthropic, bedrock, vertex, claudeaws.

Claude Opus 4.8

Copy link to headingPlayground

Copy link to headingProviders

Copy link to headingUptime24 hours

Copy link to headingThroughput24 hours

Copy link to headingLatency24 hours

Getting started

Top-level parameters

Input limits

Provider options

Routing across providers

Reasoning

Image input

PDF input

Tool calling

Fast mode

Copy link to headingMore models by Anthropic

Copy link to headingAbout Claude Opus 4.8

Copy link to headingWhat To Consider When Choosing a Provider

Copy link to headingWhen to Use Claude Opus 4.8

Best for

Consider alternatives when

Copy link to headingConclusion

Copy link to headingFrequently Asked Questions