20x the cost means you need to have fable to be 20x better than the alternative, which is a tall order. And there's more options out there too, perhaps the 4x cost is enough.

This means if the deepseek / under 1k alternative is at least x1.2 improvement, fable needs to be x24, which I think is very2 unreasonable. It is possible for it to worth if it can x2 a $20k SWE, though I doubt it can do that.