Opus 5.5 fast mode drops its waitlist: subscribers pay extra, and API pricing is twice the standard rate

Anthropic announced that fast mode for Claude Opus 5.5 is out of preview and no longer has a waitlist. It is still the same model, with unchanged capabilities, but it can generate responses up to 2.5 times as fast.

The cost is not included in the subscription. When Pro, Max and other subscribers enable fast mode in Claude Code with /fast, charges do not count against their plan allowance. Instead, they are deducted directly from “extra usage”—a separate, prepaid, pay-as-you-go balance outside the subscription. This applies even if the plan allowance has not been used up, and fast mode cannot be used unless extra usage is enabled. Team and Enterprise users need an administrator to enable it first. These Claude Code billing rules have not changed in this announcement.

Developers using the API pay per token: $8 per million input tokens and $40 per million output tokens, exactly twice the price of Opus 5.5 at standard speed. It can now be enabled by adding a single parameter, without applying for access.

It is already available in Microsoft Foundry, with Google Cloud availability coming soon.

Official documentation: https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/build-with-claude/fast-mode
Claude Code fast mode guide: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/fast-mode