Want to try Fable 5? It's back — here's how

Quick summary

• Fable 5 is back (July 1) inside Claude, Claude Code, and Cowork on Pro, Max, Team, and select Enterprise plans.
• Max and Team Premium keep it in-plan; Pro and Team Standard moved to metered usage credits at $10/$50 per million tokens on July 20 (one-time $100 credit).
• Want a top model free? Try open-weight GLM-5.2, or the new cheaper Claude Sonnet 5.
• There's no separate free Fable 5 and nothing to download — it's hosted inside Claude.

Try Fable 5 itself

Fable 5 is back in official Claude products — Claude.ai, Claude Code, and Cowork. Max and Team Premium keep it in-plan (up to 50% of weekly limits); Pro and Team Standard moved to metered usage credits on July 20 (one-time $100 credit) at the top of Anthropic's price list, where every heavy run costs real money.

• Fable 5 is back — the full story what happened and how to access it
• What Fable 5 costs now the credits math and decision rules

Try a top model for free instead

If you don't want to spend your weekly limit or pay credits, GLM-5.2 is open-weight and free to run yourself, and Anthropic's new Claude Sonnet 5 is a cheaper agentic model (the default for Free and Pro). Pick by your task — the alternatives page has the side-by-side.

• What to use instead, ranked GLM-5.2, Sonnet 5 and more

If you're in Claude or Claude Code

Fable 5 should be back in your model picker. If you switched to Opus 4.8 or GLM-5.2 during the outage, you don't have to switch back — pick by the task — Fable 5 now bills through usage credits, so save it for the jobs that need it.

From the Field Guide

Stop guessing which model to use

Weekly verified workflows for the credits era: which model in which seat, what it costs per task, and copy-ready prompts — plus an 8-runbook Starter Pack you can download once and keep. Every claim checked against published pricing, sources shown.