Overview
Anthropic has launched a “fast mode” for Claude Opus 4.6 that delivers 2.5x faster performance but costs 6x more than standard pricing. Users can access it by typing /fast in Claude Code or through the API.
Key Facts
- 2.5x faster response times - developers can now iterate and prototype at unprecedented speeds
- 6x price increase ($30/million input vs $5/million standard) - speed comes at a premium that may limit accessibility
- 50% discount until February 16th - early adopters get 3x pricing instead of 6x
- Context limit expanded to 1 million tokens (up from 200k) - handle massive codebases and documents in a single conversation
- Available via Claude Code and API - enterprise developers get production-ready fast AI
Why It Matters
This represents a fundamental trade-off between AI speed and cost - signaling that premium performance tiers may become the new normal as AI companies seek to monetize computational improvements.