tl;dr, opus 4.6 and 4.7 were amazing for my use cases (primarily academia) but after Opus 4.8 and 5.0, I’m not sure I intend on returning after trying GPT 5.6. The way anthropic handled Fable with the, “Here’s your pity 10 days of trial before you have to donate an organ to use it again”, to then, “It’s now still available on plans guys :D” after GPT being competative was just so slimey. But more importantly, going from the ease of use from Opus 4.6 being a pleasure to use, to 4.8 being the bane of my existance with 5.0 being a double-spy half the time has made me ultimately not trust Anthropic, nor its products anymore. All of this – particularly the way opus communicates + the stingy Fable plan allowance – has pushed me to finally give GPT 5.6 a try. And, all I can say is. If you haven’t tried it I’d strongly encourage you to do so. Close to Fable performance but can actually get work done. But more importantly, the realisation that benchmarks mean absolutely fucking nothing when the base model is a nightmare to work with. I have never an entity in my life experienced something as convoluded as Opus. It’s literalism over common sense is like trying to decipher a pizzle rather than using a productivity tool. And the funny thing is, we buy into accepting the fact It’s terrible to work with because we’re sold with these benchmarks that if we leave, we will be losing. But seriously what’s the point of those ‘performance’ metrics when it feels like a way just to get an output that isn’t exactly what you wanted, but you’re too exhausted having to fight opus just to get anything remotely resembling what you needed. Would love to hear what other peoples experiences are with opus 5, and 5,6. Especially if you use either for academia. submitted by /u/Accomplished-Boss415
Originally posted by u/Accomplished-Boss415 on r/ClaudeCode