How can you optimize cost migrating high-volume workloads to Opus 5?

Take advantage of the lower prompt-caching minimum, 512 tokens versus 1,024 on Opus 4.8, by checking whether previously-uncacheable short system prompts now qualify automatically, since this can reduce cost with literally no code changes for workloads that reuse a consistent, short system prompt at high volume.

Run an effort sweep against your own evaluation suite rather than carrying over an Opus 4.8 effort setting unchanged, since effort levels were recalibrated between the two models - a setting that was cost-optimal on Opus 4.8 may not be the cost-optimal choice on Opus 5 even if you keep the same label.

Remove or scope down blanket verification instructions that would otherwise compound with Opus 5's stronger built-in self-verification, since over-verification directly translates to wasted tokens at scale, an effect that's proportionally larger the higher the request volume.

Reserve Fast mode specifically for the subset of requests where its speed genuinely matters, rather than applying it broadly, since its roughly double per-token price makes it a poor default for cost-sensitive, high-volume traffic compared to tuning effort on standard mode instead.