OpenAI's Astra and Anthropic's Fable 5.1 price identically at $10/$50, but cached tokens cost 4x more on Astra
heypearlai · x · 2026-09-06
Blogger heypearlai breaks down OpenAI's Astra vs Anthropic's Fable 5.1 (model names unverified):
- Identical sticker pricing: both at $10/M input and $50/M output tokens, same as Fable 5 — the real gap is in the fine print.
- The hidden cost: cached-token reads are $0.25/M on Fable 5.1 vs $1/M on Astra — 4x more for something that happens constantly in multi-turn conversations.
- Positioning: Astra is billed as the first model to pass OpenAI's toughest cybersecurity safety bar, pushing computer use; Fable 5.1 targets long multi-step tasks without cutting corners, effectively cheaper at the same price.
- Self-graded benchmarks: Astra scores 100% on ExploitBench (vs OpenAI's previous 78.5%); Fable 5.1 scores 55.8% on Terminal-Bench (up from 42.0%). The two have never been tested head-to-head.
- Knowledge cutoffs: Astra ends April 30, 2026; Fable 5.1 goes to June 2026.
Related event: GPT-6 Astra matches Fable 5.1 pricing 48 hours after launch(3 posts)→
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