Anthropic brings back Claude Fable 5, but users say it's dumber and keeps switching to older version

Anthropic brought back the Claude Fable 5 model on July 1, after lifting export controls on June 30. Users can now use only up to 50% of their weekly quota, and starting July 7, it will be fully switched to usage-based billing.

Many users say the restored version performs worse than before, and it often triggers safety limits, falling back to the Opus 4.8 model. @arena test platform reported similar findings.

Anthropic hasn't officially responded to the complaints, but users widely agree the model seems less capable now.