Fable 5 Is Back and Sonnet 5 Is the New Default: Two Major Launches on July 1

TL;DR: Fable 5 and Mythos 5 are back globally today; Claude Sonnet 5 is simultaneously Claude Code's new default with a 1M-token context window and promotional pricing.

Fable 5 and Mythos 5 return globally. Anthropic announced today that the US Department of Commerce has lifted the export restrictions imposed on June 12 after a White House-directed security review. Access to both models is being restored as of July 1 — the restrictions, which blocked all non-US users from the models, lasted 19 days.

Why it matters: If Fable 5 is in your stack or in your customers' environments, it's available again today.

Claude Sonnet 5 is now Claude Code's default. Anthropic launched Sonnet 5 on June 30; it became the default for Free and Pro users on claude.ai and in Claude Code on July 1. Key specs: 1M-token native context window, sharper agentic coding and tool use, improved vision. Introductory pricing: $2/$10 per million input/output tokens through August 31, then $3/$15. API model ID: claude-sonnet-5-20260630. Also live in Cursor, VS Code Copilot, and GitHub Copilot.

Why it matters: Sonnet 5 at roughly half Opus's price with a matching 1M context window changes the default choice for agentic pipelines — most Claude Code users pick it up automatically today.

Sources: Anthropic: Fable 5 & Mythos 5 | Al Jazeera: US lifts export controls | Introducing Claude Sonnet 5 | Claude Code changelog