Vlad's Playbook — Changelog · Jul 27, 2026

Edition 10.9 — The refresh edition. Two Anthropic models shipped since the last capture — Sonnet 5 on June 30, Opus 5 on July 24 — and one of them broke the rule this site's tier list was built on: for as long as these leaderboards have existed, the most capable model was also the priciest. Not any more. Opus 5 took the top of the independent index at LOWER cost per task than the model below it. Every board on Ch 24 is re-captured, the vendor cards now show the public leaderboard beside the launch claim, and there is a new two-page model file on the model itself — with the part most coverage skipped: the launch table runs at max effort, the API default is high, and on debugging the expensive setting scores lower.