Pricing Comparison: The AI Pricing Index: how often model providers change their prices
The AI Pricing Index counts how many times each major model provider changed its list prices over the trailing 12 months. Every count is backed by the dated events in the timelines below, so you can audit each number against AI token pricing announcements yourself.
Provider | Price events (12mo) | Flagship price direction | Reprice risk for builders |
|---|---|---|---|
OpenAI | 6 | Up 4x | High |
6 | Up 5x (Flash tier) | High | |
Anthropic | 6 | Mixed, drifting up | Medium-high |
xAI | 5 | Mixed | Medium |
DeepSeek | 4 | Down ~75% | Medium (downward) |
Mistral | 4 | Down on flagships | Medium (downward) |
Every provider on this index repriced at least 4 times in 12 months. If your product resells these models, your COGS reprice 4-6 times a year, in both directions, sometimes with 6 weeks' notice (Sonnet 5) and sometimes with none. Whatever you charge your own customers, whether subscriptions, credits, or per-token passthrough, your billing layer has to re-derive margins and conversion rates at that cadence.
That's a repricing-velocity requirement most billing systems were never built for, which is the actual lesson of this index.
What the same workload costs across providers
The standardized scenario: 1,000 requests per day at roughly 1,000 input and 1,000 output tokens each, which works out to about 30M input and 30M output tokens per month. Monthly cost = 30 x input rate + 30 x output rate.
Model | Monthly cost |
|---|---|
Claude Fable 5 | $1,800 |
gpt-5.6-sol / gpt-5.5 | $1,050 |
Claude Opus 4.8 | $900 |
gpt-5.6-terra / gpt-5.4 | $525 |
Gemini 3.1 Pro | $420 |
Claude Sonnet 5 (intro) | $360, rising to $540 in September |
Gemini 3.5 Flash | $315 |
Mistral Medium 3.5 | $270 |
Grok 4.5 | $240 |
gpt-5.6-luna | $210 |
Claude Haiku 4.5 | $180 |
Mistral Large 3 | $60 |
DeepSeek V4 Pro | $39.15 |
Mistral Small 4 | $22.50 |
DeepSeek V4 Flash | $12.60 |
Tokenizer caveat for the Claude rows: Fable 5, Sonnet 5, and Opus 4.7+ use a new tokenizer that produces roughly 30% more tokens for the same text. Comparing per-token rates across providers understates Anthropic's effective cost per request by about that margin. Rate cards don't tell you what the invoice will say. The tokenizer does.
The spread is the story: 143x between the most and least expensive model for the same workload. How that spread lands on your margins depends on your token economics and on how you translate provider costs into credit-based pricing or invoiced usage. Solvimon runs that translation layer, see Solvimon for AI.
Methodology
The index counts documented list-price events per provider over the trailing 12 months.
An event is any of:
a new model priced differently from its predecessor,
a price cut or increase on an existing model
a plan restructure
a scheduled or announced future change
… or an effective price change such as a tokenizer change or context-window repricing.
Events are listed in the timelines below, so every count is auditable. We recount monthly.
Provider timelines
OpenAI
July 9, 2026: gpt-5.6 family launch. Sol at $5 / $30, terra at $2.50 / $15, luna at $1 / $6
April 24, 2026: gpt-5.5 launch at $5 / $30, doubling flagship input over gpt-5.4
April 9, 2026: ChatGPT Pro $100 tier added below the $200 tier
April 2, 2026: Team plan renamed Business, $25/user/mo
March 5, 2026: gpt-5.4 family launch at $2.50 / $15, doubling over gpt-5
August 2025: GPT-5 launch at $1.25 / $10
Trajectory: Flagship input went $1.25 to $2.50 to $5.00 in under a year. 4x.
May 2026 (I/O): AI Ultra restructured, $99.99 5x tier added, 20x tier cut from $249.99 to $199.99
May 19, 2026: Gemini 3.5 Flash at $1.50 / $9. 3x over Gemini 3 Flash
February 19, 2026: Gemini 3.1 Pro preview at $2 / $12, 3.1 Flash-Lite at $0.125 / $0.75
December 17, 2025: Gemini 3 Flash preview at $0.50 / $3, up 67% from 2.5 Flash
November 18, 2025: Gemini 3 Pro preview at $2 / $12, up from 2.5 Pro's $1.25 / $10
June 2025: Gemini 2.5 Flash GA at $0.30 / $2.50
Trajectory: The Flash tier is 5x more expensive than 13 months ago. The era of the ever-cheaper budget model ended here first.
Anthropic
July 2026: Claude Fable 5 launch at $10 / $50, a new tier priced above Opus
July 2026: Opus 4.7 fast mode ($30 / $150) deprecated, Opus 4.8 fast mode at $10 / $50
June 30, 2026: Sonnet 5 launch with a new tokenizer that produces roughly 30% more tokens per text, an effective price change that never appears on the rate card
June 30, 2026: Sonnet 5 introductory pricing announced at $2 / $10 through August 31, 2026, then $3 / $15. A pre-announced price increase, rare in this market
November 2025: Opus 4.5 launched at $5 / $25, down from Opus 4.1's $15 / $75. A 3x cut
October 2025: Haiku 4.5 at $1 / $5, up from Haiku 3.5's $0.80 / $4
Trajectory: Mixed. A big flagship cut in 2025, then upward drift via the premium tier, fast mode, the tokenizer, and the scheduled Sonnet increase.
xAI
July 8, 2026: Grok 4.5 at $2 / $6, up from Grok 4.3's $1.25 / $2.50, well under OpenAI and Anthropic flagships
May 15, 2026: model retirement wave
March 10, 2026: Grok 4.20 API release at $2 / $6, following the earlier grok-4.1 pricing revision
September 2025: grok-4-fast at $0.20 / $0.50
July 2025: Grok 4 launch at $3 / $15
Trajectory: Mixed, trending aggressive on price-performance.
DeepSeek
July 24, 2026 (scheduled): deepseek-chat and deepseek-reasoner aliases retired
April 24, 2026: V4 launch. V4 Flash at $0.14 / $0.28 with 1M context, V4 Pro at $0.435 / $0.87
September 29, 2025: V3.2-Exp launch, API prices cut more than 50%
September 2025: V3.1 pricing consolidated, off-peak discounts removed
Trajectory: Down. Roughly 75% cheaper than 12 months ago while adding 1M context.
Mistral
April 29, 2026: Medium 3.5 at $1.50 / $7.50 becomes the performance flagship, priced above Large 3. The naming and the pricing now point in opposite directions
March 16, 2026: Small 4 at $0.15 / $0.60
2026: Le Chat rebranded Vibe. Pro at $14.99, Team at $24.99
December 2, 2025: Large 3 at $0.50 / $1.50, down from Large 24.11's $2 / $6. A 75% cut
Trajectory: Down on flagships, with the premium moving to Medium 3.5.
All comparison guides
OpenAI vs Gemini. OpenAI and Google token prices, plans, and repricing records.
OpenAI vs DeepSeek. The widest price gap in the market, quantified.
OpenAI vs Anthropic. Two flagships priced within dollars, and a tokenizer that changes the math.
OpenAI vs xAI. Segmented lineup against a single flat-priced flagship.
OpenAI vs Mistral. Prices moving in opposite directions.
Anthropic vs Gemini. Claude and Gemini API pricing, side by side.
Anthropic vs DeepSeek. A 23x flagship cost gap on the same workload.
Gemini vs DeepSeek. The two price-aggressive providers compared.
Updated July 13, 2026. Recounted monthly. Coming next: Anthropic vs Mistral, Gemini vs Mistral, and DeepSeek vs Mistral.
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