/effort xhigh vs high vs max — Opus 4.7 Effort Levels Explained
Claude Code 2.1.111 (April 2026) shipped xhigh — a new effort level that sits between high and max. The release also added an interactive slider, so /effort with no arguments now opens an arrow-key picker instead of requiring you to remember the exact name. Here's what each level actually does, when to use them, and how the cost breaks down.
The Five Levels
| Level | What it's for | Relative cost | Typical latency |
|---|---|---|---|
low | Trivial questions, formatting, lookups. The fastest option. | 1× (baseline) | < 2s |
medium | Routine coding, refactors, doc edits. Good chat default. | ~1.3× | 2–5s |
high | Complex coding, multi-file changes. The right default for most engineering work. | ~2× | 5–15s |
xhigh New | Hard debugging, architecture design, security review. The new sweet spot when high isn't enough. | ~3–4× | 15–40s |
max | Genuinely novel problems, research-grade reasoning. Rarely necessary. | ~6–8× | 40s–2min |
Cost and latency are approximate; exact numbers vary by prompt complexity and model. Other models fall back to high when xhigh is requested — only Opus 4.7 honors the new tier directly.
How to switch
Three ways:
- Slash command:
/effort xhigh— direct switch. - Interactive slider:
/effortwith no arguments. Arrow keys to move between levels, Enter to confirm. New in 2.1.111. - CLI flag:
claude --effort xhigh— set for the whole session at launch.
The setting persists for the session. Use /effort again to change mid-conversation; cost from prior turns isn't affected.
When to use each
Default to high
For day-to-day engineering work, high is the right baseline. It produces multi-file refactors, working test suites, and reasonable architectural decisions without burning through your monthly quota. Most people who feel like Claude Code is "too expensive" are running everything on max when high would have produced equivalent results.
Drop to medium for chat
If you're asking Claude to explain something, summarize a file, or do a one-line fix, medium is plenty. The marginal quality gain at high for these tasks is small and you'll feel the latency.
Bump to xhigh when stuck
The clearest signal: you ran high, it produced something that looked plausible but didn't work, and on retry it produced the same kind of plausible-but-wrong answer. That's the failure mode xhigh targets — problems where the model needs to think longer to actually reason through the constraints. Hard concurrency bugs, design choices with non-obvious trade-offs, security advisories that require correlating multiple files.
max is rarely the answer
It exists for genuinely hard problems — novel architecture decisions, research-grade analysis. If xhigh didn't solve it, the next move is usually to break the problem into smaller pieces, not throw more compute at the same prompt. max is also gated to Max tier subscribers (and now works with Auto mode without the old --enable-auto-mode flag).
The Auto mode interaction
Claude Code 2.1.111 also shipped Auto mode for Max subscribers when using Opus 4.7. Auto picks the effort level for you based on prompt complexity — it's a different lever than /effort and can override your manual setting. If you've set /effort xhigh but Auto decides medium is enough for the next prompt, Auto wins. Disable Auto if you want to enforce a fixed effort.
Practical cost rules of thumb
- Routines should pin effort. Scheduled jobs running unattended should set effort explicitly (usually
mediumorhigh) — Auto mode's variability can blow your budget on a single off-day. - Pair Haiku with low/medium for batch work. If you're processing 100 items, use Haiku at
mediumnot Opus 4.7 atxhigh. The cost difference is 50× for marginal quality gain. - Don't use
xhighfor code review. Use/ultrareviewinstead — it's the new multi-agent review command from 2.1.111 and it's cheaper than runningxhighagainst the same diff.
Related
- Commands reference: /effort and --effort
- Claude Cowork hub — Opus 4.7 + xhigh notes
- All Claude Cowork FAQ entries
- Cost optimization guide (OpenClaw) — same principles apply
← Back to the Claude Cowork FAQ