AI Pricing Comparison 2026 — API Costs & Subscriptions
Complete pricing comparison for all major AI models. API costs per 1M tokens, monthly subscriptions, and free tiers — sorted cheapest first.
API Pricing (per 1M tokens)
Sorted by cheapest input price. Green highlight indicates best value models.
| Model | Provider | Input/1M tokens | Output/1M tokens | Free Tier? | Overall Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 3.5 Flash Best Value | $0.15 | $0.60 | Yes | 88 | Details → | |
| DeepSeek V4 Best Value | DeepSeek | $0.27 | $0.55 | Yes | 83 | Details → |
| Qwen 3 | Alibaba | $0.30 | $0.60 | Yes | 84 | Details → |
| DeepSeek V4 Pro Best Value | DeepSeek | $0.44 | $0.87 | Yes | 87 | Details → |
| Claude Haiku 3.5 | Anthropic | $0.80 | $4.00 | Yes | 79 | Details → |
| Mistral Large 3 | Mistral | $2.00 | $6.00 | — | 86 | Details → |
| GPT-4o | OpenAI | $2.50 | $10.00 | Yes | 87 | Details → |
| Command R+ | Cohere | $2.50 | $10.00 | — | 78 | Details → |
| Claude Sonnet 4 | Anthropic | $3.00 | $15.00 | Yes | 89 | Details → |
| Grok 3 | xAI | $3.00 | $15.00 | — | 86 | Details → |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro | $3.50 | $14.00 | Yes | 92 | Details → | |
| GPT-5.5 | OpenAI | $5.00 | $30.00 | Yes | 93 | Details → |
| Claude Opus 4.7 | Anthropic | $5.00 | $25.00 | Yes | 92 | Details → |
Subscription Pricing
Monthly subscription costs for chat/consumer access.
| Model | Provider | Plan Name | Monthly Price | Free Tier? | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-5.5 | OpenAI | ChatGPT Plus | $20/mo | Yes | Details → |
| GPT-4o | OpenAI | ChatGPT Plus | $20/mo | Yes | Details → |
| Claude Opus 4.7 | Anthropic | Claude Pro | $20/mo | Yes | Details → |
| Claude Sonnet 4 | Anthropic | Claude Pro | $20/mo | Yes | Details → |
| Claude Haiku 3.5 | Anthropic | Claude Pro | $20/mo | Yes | Details → |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro | Google AI Pro | $20/mo | Yes | Details → | |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | Google AI Pro | $20/mo | Yes | Details → | |
| Grok 3 | xAI | X Premium+ | $30/mo | — | Details → |
Key Takeaways
Cheapest API
Gemini 3.5 Flash at $0.15/1M input tokens — the cheapest from a major provider with an 88 overall score.
Best Free Option
Llama 4 Maverick is fully open-source. Self-host for zero API cost with competitive performance.
Best Value for Coding
DeepSeek V4 Pro at $0.44/1M input — scores 93 on coding benchmarks at a fraction of frontier model prices.