Cheapest Claude Opus 5.5 API: XCLI is 98% below the official price
Claude Opus 5.5 costs $4.00/$20 per 1M tokens from Anthropic. The cheapest quote is XCLI: $0.080 in, $0.400 out. Full table and buying checklist below.
| # | Provider | 1M input | 1M output | Discount | Tokens per $100 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | Official list | $4.00 | $20.00 | 0% | 15.0M |
| 1 | $0.080 | $0.400 | −98% | 750M | |
| 2 | $0.360 | $1.80 | −91% | 167M | |
| 3 | $0.360 | $1.80 | −91% | 167M | |
| 4 | $0.600 | $3.00 | −85% | 100M | |
| 5 | $0.600 | $3.00 | −85% | 100M | |
| 6 | $4.64 | $23.18 | — | 12.9M | |
| 7 | $11.25 | $11.25 | — | 8.89M |
Tokens per $100 assume a “code” mix: 5 input tokens per output token. Prices are crawled; verify them on the provider page before buying.
What to check before buying
- Test the key with the free API checker — it verifies the endpoint responds, without sending tokens.
- Compare the blended cost for your workload, not just the input price: output tokens dominate in agent workloads.
- Check uptime and minimum top-up: the cheapest provider is useless if it is down half the day.