Is Claude 3 Opus dead?

Yes. Claude 3 Opus was shut down on January 5, 2026, 1 year, 10 months after its launch on March 4, 2024. The cause of death was model deprecation; it was killed by Anthropic. Classification: model deprecation. Details and the source are above.

🪦 Dead

Claude 3 Opus

Model deprecation · Model Deprecation · shut down January 5, 2026

Born: March 4, 2024
Died: January 5, 2026
Lifespan: 1y 10m
Cause of death: Model Deprecation
Killed by: Anthropic
Type: Model

Anthropic's most powerful Claude 3 model, praised for creative writing and deep analysis. Deprecated on June 30, 2025, nearly 16 months after launch, as Claude 3.5 Sonnet outperformed it at a fraction of the cost, and retired from the Claude API on January 5, 2026. Anthropic gave the retired model its own Substack, Claude's Corner, and kept limited access for paid claude.ai users and API customers on request.

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Claude 3 Opus

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