Yeah this isn't intuitive at all.

Both companies have screwed up their naming royally. Maybe that's intentional - I'm sure it doesn't hurt Anthropic to have people using Fable a bit longer than they need to and racking up a huge bill in the process.

They're always very clear about it when a new model comes out. You have to click away a banner to continue using the service. There's not much they can do to make it any more obvious without it being a major hassle for all the people who understand versioning.

It is: Fable 5.5 will be better than Opus 5.5. Opus 6 will be better than Fable 5.5, Fable 6 will be better than Opus 6, etc.

You're comparing different generations, any 5.5 models could be better than any 5.0 model.