AI Model Price Tracker

Every major model's current API price in one table — list rates, cached-input rates, and what the two actually add up to on a real workload — plus a running changelog of cuts, hikes, and new releases. Last verified: October 2026.

Current prices (per 1M tokens, standard tier)

¶Gemini 3.6 Flash has the same introductory rate as 3.7 and 3.8 Flash, $0.75 / $3.75 through December 31, 2026 — list price shown. *Gemini 3.7 Flash has an introductory rate of $0.75 / $3.75 through December 31, 2026 — list price shown. §Gemini 3.8 Flash has the same introductory rate, $0.75 / $3.75 through December 31, 2026 — list price shown. ‡GPT-5.6 Sol has an introductory rate of $4.00 / $20.00 through at least November 21, 2026 — list price shown. ‖Claude Mythos 5.1 is priced and weighted identically to Claude Fable 5.1, but access is restricted to vetted organisations under Anthropic's Cyber and Life Sciences Verification Programs. **Claude Haiku 5.5's rate applies to prompts up to 100K tokens; above that, input/output rise to $0.50 / $2.50. Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5.1's cached-input rate is a genuine cut, not a promotion: Anthropic dropped it 75% from Fable 5's; Claude Opus 5.5's cache read is $0.20, a smaller 5%-of-input cut rather than the usual 10%. Estimate your own workload with the AI cost calculator.

Changelog

October 12, 2026 — Claude Haiku 5.5 launches

• New: Claude Haiku 5.5 (Anthropic) — launched October 7 at $0.10 / $0.50 for prompts up to 100K tokens ($0.50 / $2.50 above that), a roughly 75% cut versus Claude Haiku 4.5's $1.00 / $5.00 and a price twin of GPT-6 Luna at the short-prompt rate. Anthropic's new budget pick, with adjustable effort settings; Haiku 4.5 remains available, unchanged.
• No changes to any previously tracked model's standard input/output price this cycle.

October 5, 2026 — Claude Sonnet 5.5 launches

• New: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Anthropic) — launched September 28 at $2.00 / $10.00, the same standard rate as Claude Sonnet 5, with a 1M-token context window and roughly 30% faster responses. Anthropic attributes the real-world savings it claims to using fewer tokens for the same task, not to a lower per-token price. Sonnet 5 remains available.
• No changes to any previously tracked model's standard input/output price this cycle.

September 28, 2026 — three new-model launches, no changes to existing prices

• New: GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna (OpenAI) — launched September 22 at $2.00 / $10.00 and $0.10 / $0.50, permanent standard-tier rates rather than promotions. Both are exactly half of GPT-5.6 Sol's current introductory rate and GPT-5.6 Luna's list rate; GPT-5.6 Sol and GPT-5.6 Luna remain available, unchanged.
• New: Claude Opus 5.5 (Anthropic) — launched September 22 at $4.00 / $20.00, a 20% cut versus Claude Opus 5's $5.00 / $25.00 and Anthropic's new default frontier pick for agentic coding. Opus 5 and Opus 4.8 remain available.
• New: Claude Mythos 5.1 (Anthropic) — launched September 1 alongside Fable 5.1 at the same $10.00 / $50.00 rate (missed by this tracker until now); access is restricted to vetted cyberdefense and life-sciences organisations rather than being generally available.
• No changes to any previously tracked model's standard input/output price this cycle.

September 14, 2026 — Gemini 3.6 Flash intro-pricing correction

• Cut (introductory): Gemini 3.6 Flash (Google): $1.50 / $7.50 → $0.75 / $3.75 — Google extended the same introductory rate already running on Gemini 3.7 and 3.8 Flash to 3.6 Flash as well, live since August 13, 2026 and promotional through December 31, 2026; list price is unchanged and shown in the table above. This tracker missed it until now — no other standard price changed this cycle.

September 7, 2026 — two new launches, one real cache-price cut

• New: GPT-6 Astra (OpenAI) — launched September 3 at $10.00 / $50.00, a price twin of Claude Fable 5 and 5.1 at the top of the tracked lineup. OpenAI's first model to trip its own critical-cyber safeguard threshold, per the company's own announcement.
• New: Claude Fable 5.1 (Anthropic) — launched September 1 at the same $10.00 / $50.00 standard rate as Fable 5, but with cached input cut 75%, from $1.00 to $0.25 per 1M tokens. Fable 5 remains available.
• New: Gemini 3.8 Flash (Google) — launched September 2 at an introductory $0.75 / $3.75 through December 31, 2026; standard rate afterward is $1.50 / $7.50, a price twin of Gemini 3.6 Flash and Gemini 3.7 Flash's post-promotion rate. Gemini 3.6 and 3.7 Flash remain available.
• No changes to any previously tracked model's standard input/output price this cycle.

August 31, 2026 — GPT-5.6 Sol price cut

• Cut (introductory): GPT-5.6 Sol (OpenAI): $5.00 / $30.00 → $4.00 / $20.00 — OpenAI quietly cut Sol's price over 20% on August 21, promotional through at least November 21, 2026; list price is unchanged and shown in the table above.

August 17, 2026 — Sonnet 5's intro rate made permanent, Gemini 3.7 Flash launches

• Price change: Claude Sonnet 5 (Anthropic): $3.00 / $15.00 → $2.00 / $10.00 — Anthropic cancelled the September 1 reversion to list price and made the $2/$10 introductory rate permanent (announced August 11).
• New: Gemini 3.7 Flash (Google) — launched August 13 at an introductory $0.75 / $3.75 through December 31, 2026; standard rate afterward is $1.50 / $7.50, a price twin of Gemini 3.6 Flash. Gemini 3.6 Flash remains available.

August 3, 2026 — OpenAI price cuts

• Cut: GPT-5.6 Luna (OpenAI): $1.00 / $6.00 → $0.20 / $1.20 — an 80% cut, moving Luna from the Fast tier into Budget and making it the cheapest OpenAI model tracked here.
• Cut: GPT-5.6 Terra (OpenAI): $2.50 / $15.00 → $2.00 / $12.00 — a 20% cut; Terra now matches Gemini 3.1 Pro's price exactly instead of GPT-5.4's.
• OpenAI made both cuts on July 30, 2026, three weeks after the GPT-5.6 family's July 9 launch.

July 27, 2026 — two new model launches

• New: Claude Opus 5 (Anthropic) — $5.00 / $25.00, same price as Opus 4.8 but a generational capability jump; Opus 4.8 remains available.
• New: Gemini 3.6 Flash (Google) — $1.50 / $7.50, an output-price cut from Gemini 3.5 Flash's $9.00 with better token efficiency; 3.5 Flash remains available.
• No changes to prices on any previously tracked model this cycle.

July 2026 — tracker launched (baseline)

• Baseline prices recorded for the 14 models tracked at launch. Two more have been added since — see the entries above.
• Notable going in: OpenAI's new GPT-5.6 family (Luna/Terra/Sol) spans $1–$5 input; Claude Sonnet 5 is running an intro discount ($2/$10) through the end of August; Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite remains the cheapest tracked model at $0.10 input.
• This page is updated monthly — bookmark it to catch cuts before your next bill.

The one trend to know

The price of a given level of AI capability has been falling fast — industry analyses put it around 10× cheaper per year for equivalent quality, driven by hardware, efficiency gains, and competition. Practically: the flagship model you priced six months ago probably has a successor that's cheaper and better. Re-check before committing an annual budget, and design your product so the model can be swapped easily.

List price vs. what you actually pay

The table above is the ceiling. Two mechanisms move a real bill well below it, and which one applies depends entirely on whether a human is waiting for the answer.

Prompt caching discounts input the model has already seen — a long system prompt, an attached document, or the conversation so far. It suits anything real-time and repetitive. Batch processing halves the price of work submitted as a job and collected later, typically within hours. It suits anything nobody is waiting on. They rarely both apply to the same workload.

Chatbot assumption: 1,000 conversations × 8 turns ≈ 12M input and 0.8M output tokens, of which about 80% of input is re-sent history eligible for a cache hit. Notes assumption: 250 workdays × 8,000 input and 600 output tokens. Full workings for these and six other jobs are on the cost benchmarks page.

The practical read: if your workload is conversational, caching is the first thing to implement and usually beats switching to a cheaper model. If your workload is asynchronous, batch is close to free money and takes an afternoon to adopt. Reaching for a smaller model before doing either is the common ordering mistake.

How to read AI pricing pages without getting burned

• Input vs output: output is 3–6× dearer; workloads that write a lot (drafting, code generation) cost more than the input price suggests.
• Long-context surcharges: some models charge more above ~200K tokens of context.
• Cached/batch rates: the headline price is the ceiling — caching (~90% off repeated input) and batch (~50% off) are the working floor. Worked examples are in list price vs. what you actually pay above, and eight full job costings are on the cost benchmarks page.
• Intro pricing: launch discounts expire (see Sonnet 5 above) — note the end date in your cost model.

The guide that goes deeper

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