Route the Cache, Not the Price Sheet
TL;DR for operators A higher-priced model can be the cheaper model to run. Under the September 2026 pricing assumptions examined by Abbasi, Aqrawi, and Kwartler, Fable 5.1 becomes cheaper than Opus 5 once a warm agentic turn reaches roughly 71,000 tokens of context at 18 tool steps, despite Fable’s higher ordinary input and output prices.1 ...