According to our measurements this isn't true. We re-ran Opus 5.5 today on the benchmark we ran in September, with the same prompt and settings. Before and after, side by side: https://playcode.io/blog/macbook-svg-benchmark#reruns

Max, streamed (128K cap): 128,000 tokens, $2.56, empty file, in September and today.

Max, Batch API (300K): 255,957 tokens for $2.56 in September, 243,707 for $2.44 today. The two drawings: https://playcode.io/marketing/assets/static/claude-opus-5-5-... and https://playcode.io/marketing/assets/static/claude-opus-5-5-...

Xhigh: 86,096 tokens for $1.72 in September, 107,333 for $2.15 today.

The Batch API bills half price. Max ran out of the 128K ceiling again, to the token. Given 300K, it drew the same kind of laptop with 5% fewer tokens. Xhigh used 25% more and drew the same kind of laptop. That's inside the noise: 17 identical calls at high ranged from 17,757 to 59,705 tokens.

The model is still the best of everything we've tried. Most likely the next best would be Fable 5.2. But we don't like Fable because essentially the result is the same, just the price is higher. Its medium and high are close to what Opus 5.5 Max had, but the price is higher.

(I run Playcode, an AI app builder. We benchmark every model before we add it.)