Frontier AI costs $21.13 per million tokens — that's roughly $0.02 per 750-word blog post generated by GPT-4o or Claude Sonnet. For most small businesses processing under 10,000 tasks per month, AI API costs are under $50/month.
Budget models deliver 80-90% of frontier quality at 28x lower cost. The Budget Index sits at $0.76/1M tokens — models like Gemini Flash, DeepSeek V3, and Llama 4 handle email drafting, customer replies, and document processing at near-zero marginal cost.
The price gap between providers is widening. OpenAI's o-series reasoning models cost up to $262/1M tokens, while open-source alternatives from Meta and DeepSeek deliver strong results under $1/1M tokens. The "right" model depends entirely on the task.
Most small businesses are overpaying. Consumer subscriptions ($20-200/month) include usage caps and features most users don't need. API access to the same models costs 5-20x less for typical small business workloads.
Data sourced from OpenRouter public API. Updated monthly. Cite as: AIscending AI Pricing Index, 2026-05. Questions? [email protected]
What Do These Numbers Mean?
The AI CPI tracks the average cost of using top-tier AI models (GPT-4o, Claude Sonnet, Gemini Pro, etc.) per million tokens — roughly 750,000 words of input/output combined. If you're building with AI APIs, this is your benchmark.
The Budget Index tracks the same metric for cost-efficient models (Gemini Flash, DeepSeek, Llama, Mistral Small). These deliver 80-90% of frontier quality at a fraction of the price — and they're what most small businesses should actually use.
How to Read This Data
Blended Price is what you'd actually pay per million tokens using a typical mix of 75% input and 25% output. Think of it as the "real-world cost" of using the model. Input tokens (what you send) are almost always cheaper than output tokens (what the model writes back), so the blend gives you a single number to compare apples to apples.
Per 1M Tokens — one million tokens is roughly 750,000 words, about 10 novels. That sounds like a lot, but most small business tasks use only 1,000 to 5,000 tokens per request. A quick customer email might use 500 tokens. Summarizing a 10-page contract might use 8,000. The per-million pricing is just how providers quote rates — divide by 1,000 to get the cost of a single typical request.
Context Length is how much text the model can "see" at once. A model with 128K context can process about 96,000 words in a single request — enough for a full book. Longer context means you can feed it bigger documents without splitting them up. Most everyday tasks need less than 8K tokens of context.
FrontierThe most capable models available. Best accuracy, most features, highest cost. Use these when quality matters more than budget — complex analysis, legal review, code architecture.
EfficiencyOptimized for cost. These deliver 80-90% of frontier quality at a fraction of the price. For most small business tasks — email drafts, classification, summarization — these are the smart choice.
ReasoningSpecialized for complex logic, math, and multi-step problems. They "think" before answering, which costs more but produces better results on hard problems like scientific analysis or financial modeling.
Open SourceCommunity-built models anyone can host. Often the cheapest option because providers compete on price. Great for teams with technical capacity or cost-sensitive production workloads.
AI CPI is our composite index tracking how frontier AI pricing changes month to month — like the Consumer Price Index, but for AI. When the AI CPI drops, it means the same quality of AI output is getting cheaper. We track this so you can time your AI adoption to real market conditions, not hype cycles.
Current AI Model Pricing
Blended price per 1M tokens (75% input, 25% output). Lower is cheaper.
API Pricing — Per 1M Tokens
What developers and automation builders pay. All prices in USD via OpenRouter.
Tip: click any column header to sort.
Model
Provider
Category
Input / 1M
Output / 1M
Blended / 1M
Context
Mistral Small 3
Mistral
Efficiency
$0.05
$0.08
$0.06
32,768
Nova Micro 1.0
Amazon
Efficiency
$0.04
$0.14
$0.06
128,000
Command R7B (12-2024)
Cohere
Efficiency
$0.04
$0.15
$0.07
128,000
Nova Lite 1.0
Amazon
Efficiency
$0.06
$0.24
$0.11
300,000
Mistral Small 3.2 24B
Mistral
Efficiency
$0.08
$0.20
$0.11
128,000
Gemini 2.0 Flash Lite
Google
Efficiency
$0.08
$0.30
$0.13
1,048,576
Llama 4 Scout
Meta
Open source
$0.08
$0.30
$0.14
327,680
GPT-5 Nano
OpenAI
Efficiency
$0.05
$0.40
$0.14
400,000
Llama 3.3 70B Instruct
Meta
Open source
$0.10
$0.32
$0.16
131,072
DeepSeek V4 Flash
DeepSeek
Open source
$0.14
$0.28
$0.18
1,048,576
Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite
Google
Efficiency
$0.10
$0.40
$0.18
1,048,576
GPT-4.1 Nano
OpenAI
Efficiency
$0.10
$0.40
$0.18
1,047,576
Gemini 2.0 Flash
Google
Efficiency
$0.10
$0.40
$0.18
1,000,000
Mistral Small 4
Mistral
Efficiency
$0.15
$0.60
$0.26
262,144
Llama 4 Maverick
Meta
Open source
$0.15
$0.60
$0.26
1,048,576
Command R (08-2024)
Cohere
Efficiency
$0.15
$0.60
$0.26
128,000
Grok 4.1 Fast
xAI
Efficiency
$0.20
$0.50
$0.28
2,000,000
Grok 4 Fast
xAI
Efficiency
$0.20
$0.50
$0.28
2,000,000
DeepSeek V3.2
DeepSeek
Open source
$0.25
$0.38
$0.28
131,072
R1 Distill Qwen 32B
DeepSeek
Reasoning
$0.29
$0.29
$0.29
32,768
DeepSeek V3.1
DeepSeek
Open source
$0.15
$0.75
$0.30
32,768
DeepSeek V3.2 Exp
DeepSeek
Open source
$0.27
$0.41
$0.31
163,840
DeepSeek V3 0324
DeepSeek
Open source
$0.20
$0.77
$0.34
163,840
Grok 3 Mini
xAI
Efficiency
$0.30
$0.50
$0.35
131,072
DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus
DeepSeek
Open source
$0.21
$0.79
$0.36
163,840
Mistral Small 3.1 24B
Mistral
Efficiency
$0.35
$0.56
$0.40
128,000
GPT-5.4 Nano
OpenAI
Efficiency
$0.20
$1.25
$0.46
400,000
Grok Code Fast 1
xAI
Efficiency
$0.20
$1.50
$0.53
256,000
DeepSeek V4 Pro
DeepSeek
Open source
$0.44
$0.87
$0.54
1,048,576
DeepSeek V3.2 Speciale
DeepSeek
Open source
$0.40
$1.20
$0.60
163,840
GPT-5 Mini
OpenAI
Efficiency
$0.25
$2.00
$0.69
400,000
GPT-4.1 Mini
OpenAI
Efficiency
$0.40
$1.60
$0.70
1,047,576
R1 Distill Llama 70B
DeepSeek
Reasoning
$0.70
$0.80
$0.73
131,072
Mistral Medium 3.1
Mistral
Efficiency
$0.40
$2.00
$0.80
131,072
Mistral Medium 3
Mistral
Efficiency
$0.40
$2.00
$0.80
131,072
Nova 2 Lite
Amazon
Efficiency
$0.30
$2.50
$0.85
1,000,000
Nano Banana (Gemini 2.5 Flash Image)
Google
Efficiency
$0.30
$2.50
$0.85
32,768
Gemini 2.5 Flash
Google
Efficiency
$0.30
$2.50
$0.85
1,048,576
Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image Preview)
Google
Efficiency
$0.50
$3.00
$1.13
65,536
Gemini 3 Flash Preview
Google
Efficiency
$0.50
$3.00
$1.13
1,048,576
R1
DeepSeek
Reasoning
$0.70
$2.50
$1.15
64,000
Nova Pro 1.0
Amazon
Efficiency
$0.80
$3.20
$1.40
300,000
Grok 4.3
xAI
Frontier
$1.25
$2.50
$1.56
1,000,000
Claude 3.5 Haiku
Anthropic
Efficiency
$0.80
$4.00
$1.60
200,000
GPT-5.4 Mini
OpenAI
Efficiency
$0.75
$4.50
$1.69
400,000
o4 Mini High
OpenAI
Reasoning
$1.10
$4.40
$1.93
200,000
o4 Mini
OpenAI
Reasoning
$1.10
$4.40
$1.93
200,000
o3 Mini High
OpenAI
Reasoning
$1.10
$4.40
$1.93
200,000
o3 Mini
OpenAI
Reasoning
$1.10
$4.40
$1.93
200,000
Claude Haiku 4.5
Anthropic
Efficiency
$1.00
$5.00
$2.00
200,000
Mistral Large
Mistral
Frontier
$2.00
$6.00
$3.00
128,000
GPT-5.1
OpenAI
Frontier
$1.25
$10.00
$3.44
400,000
GPT-5
OpenAI
Frontier
$1.25
$10.00
$3.44
400,000
Gemini 2.5 Pro
Google
Efficiency
$1.25
$10.00
$3.44
1,048,576
o4 Mini Deep Research
OpenAI
Reasoning
$2.00
$8.00
$3.50
200,000
o3
OpenAI
Reasoning
$2.00
$8.00
$3.50
200,000
GPT-4.1
OpenAI
Frontier
$2.00
$8.00
$3.50
1,047,576
Command R+ (08-2024)
Cohere
Frontier
$2.50
$10.00
$4.38
128,000
Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview
Google
Efficiency
$2.00
$12.00
$4.50
1,048,576
Nano Banana Pro (Gemini 3 Pro Image Preview)
Google
Efficiency
$2.00
$12.00
$4.50
65,536
GPT-5.2
OpenAI
Frontier
$1.75
$14.00
$4.81
400,000
Nova Premier 1.0
Amazon
Frontier
$2.50
$12.50
$5.00
1,000,000
GPT-5.4
OpenAI
Frontier
$2.50
$15.00
$5.63
1,050,000
Claude Sonnet 4.6
Anthropic
Frontier
$3.00
$15.00
$6.00
1,000,000
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Anthropic
Frontier
$3.00
$15.00
$6.00
1,000,000
Grok 4
xAI
Frontier
$3.00
$15.00
$6.00
256,000
Grok 3
xAI
Frontier
$3.00
$15.00
$6.00
131,072
Claude Sonnet 4
Anthropic
Frontier
$3.00
$15.00
$6.00
1,000,000
Claude 3.7 Sonnet
Anthropic
Frontier
$3.00
$15.00
$6.00
200,000
Claude Opus 4.7
Anthropic
Frontier
$5.00
$25.00
$10.00
1,000,000
Claude Opus 4.6
Anthropic
Frontier
$5.00
$25.00
$10.00
1,000,000
Claude Opus 4.5
Anthropic
Frontier
$5.00
$25.00
$10.00
200,000
GPT-5.5
OpenAI
Frontier
$5.00
$30.00
$11.25
1,050,000
o3 Deep Research
OpenAI
Reasoning
$10.00
$40.00
$17.50
200,000
o1
OpenAI
Reasoning
$15.00
$60.00
$26.25
200,000
Claude Opus 4.1
Anthropic
Frontier
$15.00
$75.00
$30.00
200,000
Claude Opus 4
Anthropic
Frontier
$15.00
$75.00
$30.00
200,000
o3 Pro
OpenAI
Reasoning
$20.00
$80.00
$35.00
200,000
GPT-5 Pro
OpenAI
Frontier
$15.00
$120.00
$41.25
400,000
GPT-5.2 Pro
OpenAI
Frontier
$21.00
$168.00
$57.75
400,000
Claude Opus 4.6 (Fast)
Anthropic
Frontier
$30.00
$150.00
$60.00
1,000,000
GPT-5.5 Pro
OpenAI
Frontier
$30.00
$180.00
$67.50
1,050,000
GPT-5.4 Pro
OpenAI
Frontier
$30.00
$180.00
$67.50
1,050,000
o1-pro
OpenAI
Reasoning
$150.00
$600.00
$262.50
200,000
Pricing by Category
Frontier models cost 10-50x more than efficiency models. For most small business use cases, the Budget Index models are the better value.
20x median gap. Frontier models cost a median of $6.00/1M tokens; open-source models cost $0.30. Same task, 20x the bill.
Reasoning models hide a 905x range. From $0.29 at the low end to $262.50 at the top. Picking the wrong reasoning model can multiply your monthly AI spend.
Efficiency tier handles 80% of small business tasks. If your use case is summarization, drafting, classification, or routing — there's no business reason to pay frontier prices.
Subscription Pricing — Monthly Plans
What consumers and business users pay for AI tools. No API needed.
Tool
Provider
Price/mo
Tier
What You Get
ChatGPT Plus
OpenAI
$20/mo
Consumer
GPT-4o, DALL-E, browsing, plugins
ChatGPT Pro
OpenAI
$200/mo
Power User
Unlimited GPT-4o, o1 pro mode
Claude Pro
Anthropic
$20/mo
Consumer
5x more usage, priority access
Claude Max (Sonnet)
Anthropic
$100/mo
Power User
20x Sonnet usage
Claude Max (Opus)
Anthropic
$200/mo
Power User
20x Opus usage
Gemini Advanced
Google
$20/mo
Consumer
Gemini 2.5 Pro, 1M context
Perplexity Pro
Perplexity
$20/mo
Consumer
Unlimited Pro searches, file uploads
Copilot Pro
Microsoft
$20/mo
Consumer
GPT-4 in Office apps
Grok Premium+
xAI
$50/mo
Power User
Grok 3 + SuperGrok
Jasper Creator
Jasper
$49/mo
Business
AI writing + brand voice
Copy.ai Starter
Copy.ai
$49/mo
Business
AI writing + workflows
Model Profiles
What each model is actually good at — and when to use it.
Self-hosted chat, Budget API tasks, Experimentation
Llama 3.3 70B
Meta
Proven open-source workhorse
Production workloads, Fine-tuning base, Self-hosted apps
Qwen 2.5 72B
Alibaba
Multilingual and Chinese-language tasks
Multilingual apps, Asian market content, Code generation
Pricing Trends Over Time
How AI model pricing has changed month over month. The trend is clear: costs are falling fast.
Why Do Some Models Cost 100x More?
Model size is the biggest factor. Frontier models like GPT-4o and Claude Opus run hundreds of billions of parameters — every token you send gets processed through all of them. More parameters means more compute per request.
Reasoning models (o1, o3, DeepSeek R1) are even more expensive because they run multiple internal passes before answering. You're paying for the model to "think" — sometimes generating 10x more hidden tokens than what you see in the response.
Open source competition is what drives the Budget Index down. Models like Llama and Mistral can be hosted by anyone, so providers compete on price. That's why a Llama 4 Scout query costs $0.14 per million tokens while an o1 query costs $262 — same unit of measurement, wildly different economics.
Not sure which AI tool fits your budget? Try the Free AI ROI Calculator to estimate your savings.
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