Opus 5.5 Made Cache Reads 60% Cheaper. I Redid the Math on My Text-to-SQL Architecture
TL;DR: Claude Opus 5.5 came out yesterday with cache reads at $0.20 per million tokens, 60% cheaper than Opus 5. I redid the cost math for my text-to-SQL CRM assistant. For one design choice, the cost gap between "retrieve only the relevant schema" and "send the whole schema every time, cached" shrank from 2.1x to 1.2x . At that point the choice stops being about cost and becomes about accuracy.…
Yesterday, Claude Opus 5.5 release brought cache reads at $0.20 per million tokens, 60% cheaper than Opus 5. Cost comparison for a text-to-SQL CRM assistant revealed a smaller gap between retrieving only relevant schema and sending the whole schema every time. The choice shifted from cost to accuracy. The migration guide introduced two breaking changes affecting text-to-SQL setups.
Opus 5.5's pricing eliminated the need for a full semantic layer, changing the cost equation. However, the decision still hinged on accuracy. The recommended approach involves a hybrid solution - a static cached schema alongside retrieved examples.
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