Claude is an AI assistant built by a company called Anthropic, and one of the main rivals to ChatGPT. Like ChatGPT, it talks in text: it answers questions, writes and edits, helps with code, and analyzes documents. But Claude has its own character and its own strengths.
In 2026, Claude got a new model — Fable, the most powerful one available to the general public. Let's break down what Claude is, what its family of models looks like, what makes Fable interesting, and how to get access to the service.
What is Claude
Claude is a large language model in a friendly chat, much like ChatGPT. You write a request in plain language, and Claude generates a reply. You can use it on the claude.ai website, in a mobile app, and developers connect it to their own software through an API.
The name is a nod to Claude Shannon, the scientist widely regarded as the father of information theory. From the start, Anthropic has emphasized building AI that is not only smart but also safe, honest, and predictable.
Anthropic is the company behind Claude, founded in 2021 by former OpenAI staff. Its defining focus is AI safety: how to make powerful models behave reliably and avoid causing harm.
How Claude works
Under the hood, Claude works like other modern AI assistants. At its core is a large language model (LLM), trained on a huge amount of text, that generates its answer by predicting it in small pieces (tokens), one word at a time.
If the mechanism is the same as ChatGPT's, where's the difference? In the details of training and tuning. Claude's developers pay special attention to making the model:
- give careful, measured answers rather than saying something just to say it;
- honestly admit when it doesn't know something;
- work well with very long texts and large amounts of code;
- follow instructions and stay within the boundaries you set.
That's why Claude is especially popular with programmers and anyone who works heavily with text and documents.
The Claude model family
Claude isn't a single model but a whole lineup. The models are named after poetic forms, and the "larger" the form, the more powerful the model:
| Model | Best for | What stands out |
|---|---|---|
| Haiku | Simple, fast tasks | Fastest and cheapest |
| Sonnet | Everyday work | A balance of speed and quality |
| Opus | Hard tasks | High power and reasoning |
| Fable | The most demanding work | The new flagship, maximum capability |
The idea is simple: not every task needs the most powerful (and most expensive) model. A quick question is fine for Haiku, ordinary work for Sonnet, and genuinely hard tasks are worth handing to Opus or Fable. Version numbers (like Sonnet 5 or Opus 4.8) get refreshed as new generations ship.
The new Claude Fable model
Fable is the most powerful Claude model available to the public. It launched in June 2026 and became the new peak of the lineup, sitting even above Opus.
What makes Fable stand out:
- Maximum capability. On most tests of AI ability it posts the strongest results — in programming, analysis, and scientific and professional work.
- Long autonomous work. Fable is built for so-called agentic tasks: it can plan work many steps ahead, use tools, check its own work, and keep going on a large task for an extended stretch — sometimes literally hours.
- A huge context window. The model holds up to 1 million tokens in "memory" at once — hundreds of pages of text, or an entire large codebase.
An "agent" is an AI that doesn't just reply with text but takes actions: it searches for information on its own, runs commands, edits files, and works toward a goal step by step. Fable shines most in exactly these tasks — for example, inside Claude Code, a tool that can write and edit code in a real project.
Keep in mind: you don't always need the most powerful model. For an ordinary question, Fable is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Its strength shows on genuinely hard, large tasks where depth of reasoning and the ability to work long and independently really matter.
What Claude can do
As a general-purpose AI assistant, Claude handles a wide range of tasks:
- Writing and editing — draft, shorten, rewrite in a given tone, proofread.
- Code — write a function, find and explain a bug, work through a large project.
- Document analysis — summarize a long PDF, compare contracts, pull out the key points.
- Explanations — break down a complex topic in plain language.
- Images — describe a picture, read a diagram or a screenshot.
Claude is particularly valued for working with long material: thanks to its large context window, it keeps the whole document in mind, not just a slice of it.
Claude or ChatGPT — which to choose
There's no outright "winner" here — both models are strong, and the choice depends on the task and your preferences. In short:
- ChatGPT — the most popular, with a huge ecosystem and lots of built-in features.
- Claude — often praised for accuracy, working with long texts and code, and a calmer, more deliberate answering style.
In practice, many people use both: one tool fits some tasks better, the other fits others. Both services have free versions, so you can try them and compare for yourself.
How to reach Claude when it's not available
Like ChatGPT, Claude isn't officially available in every country. When a service isn't offered in your region, opening claude.ai directly can run into access restrictions.
The stable fix is a VPN: it connects your internet through a server in a country where Claude works, and the service opens normally.
As with ChatGPT, a VPN handles access and a stable connection, but registering and paying for premium plans may also require a foreign phone number and an international card. Those are separate problems, and a VPN covers only part of them — the most important part.
With RuSolv, connecting takes a couple of minutes: pick a server in a suitable region, connect over WireGuard, and use Claude with no geographic limits. Pricing starts at $0.05 per hour, or $4.50 per month if you use AI services regularly.
Bottom line
Claude is an AI assistant from Anthropic that leans on accuracy, safety, and handling hard, large tasks. It comes as a whole family of models — from the fast Haiku to the new flagship Fable, the most powerful publicly available model, built for long autonomous work.
Like any AI, Claude isn't flawless and can make mistakes, so important facts are worth double-checking. But as a smart helper for text, code, and analysis, it's very strong. And if the service isn't available in your region, a reliable VPN brings back your access.
