What AI used to cost — and what it costs now.
One consistent place to see how AI prices have moved, across text and creative work. The numbers live here; the why lives on our two sister sites.
Lean toward price, brains, speed or eco — watch the models climb and fall, and see your #1 pop up.
Text & token pricing
Per 1M tokens (input / output). Representative standard list rates from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini and DeepSeek, checked 9 Sep 2026 against TokenScale’s nightly checked record, which marks any carried observation. Active promotions are excluded here. The complete market is the 22-provider, 66-tier table on TokenScale.
Snapshot: standard list rates
| Model | Input | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Fable 5.1 officialAnthropic | $10.00 | $50.00 |
| GPT-5.6 Sol officialOpenAI | $5.00 | $30.00 |
| GPT-5.6 Terra officialOpenAI | $2.00 | $12.00 |
| Pro 3.1 officialGoogle Gemini | $2.00 | $12.00 |
| Claude Sonnet 5 officialAnthropic | $2.00 | $10.00 |
| Flash 3.6 officialGoogle Gemini | $1.50 | $7.50 |
| V4 Pro · peak rate officialDeepSeek | $1.32 | $3.96 |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 officialAnthropic | $1.00 | $5.00 |
| V4 Flash · peak rate officialDeepSeek | $0.44 | $1.32 |
| Flash-Lite 3.5 officialGoogle Gemini | $0.30 | $2.50 |
| GPT-5.6 Luna officialOpenAI | $0.20 | $1.20 |
The trend — input $ / 1M tokens over time
Log scale. Flagship input fell from $30 for GPT‑4 in March 2023, then rose at the newest frontier: Claude Fable 5 is $10.00 per 1M input tokens. The budget record is not a straight line either. Gemini Flash-Lite moved from $0.10 to $0.30 in July 2026. An unsupported OpenAI Luna $0.20 reading was withdrawn on 11 August; a fresh official same-model repricing on 12 August then set Luna to $0.20. Both events remain in Price Moves.
Why did a token ever cost that — and why is "cheap" so confusing? TokenScale explains it in real reading.
TokenScale →Image, video & audio pricing
Representative cost per usable unit — one image, one second of video, one minute of voice. These creative rates still carry PixelScale’s June 2026 snapshot, they were not part of the 8 August text refresh, so treat them as older than the table above.
Snapshot: June 2026 creative rates, not current
| Model | Unit | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Imagen 4 Fast officialGoogle | per image | $0.020 |
| FLUX 1.1 Pro officialBlack Forest Labs | per image | $0.040 |
| GPT Image 1.5 est.OpenAI | per image | $0.040 |
| Midjourney Std est.Midjourney | per image | $0.035 |
| Veo 3.1 Fast officialGoogle | per second | $0.100 |
| Sora 2 officialOpenAI | per second | $0.100 |
| Gen-4 Turbo officialRunway | per second | $0.050 |
| Dream Machine est.Luma | per second | $0.080 |
| Multilingual v2 est.ElevenLabs | per min voice | $0.160 |
The trend — video $ / second (Veo, illustrative)
Illustrative, Google Veo 3.1 tiers (public pricing + creator reports, June 2026). Some API rates fell even as subscription plans felt tighter — the unit changed, not just the number.
One final image is rarely one generation. PixelScale shows the real project cost after retries, upscales and edits.
PixelScale →cheaper to reach GPT‑4‑class text in three years
GPT‑4 launched at $30 / $60 per 1M tokens in March 2023. A capable budget model now runs $0.20 per 1M input (GPT-5.6 Luna), a 150× drop. Go past the frontier labs and TokenScale's floor across all 22 providers is $0.02 per 1M (Llama 3.1 8B on DeepInfra), which is 1,500×.
The twist worth remembering: the very newest flagships have started ticking up again. Cheaper isn't a straight line — it depends entirely on which tier you pick.
This comparison has changed as current models changed. Nothing about 2023 was rewritten. The present 150× figure compares GPT-4's $30 launch input rate with GPT-5.6 Luna's current $0.20 input rate; lower specialist and hosted-open-model rates exist elsewhere in TokenScale's complete board.
How to read this
Text list rates: OpenAI API pricing · Anthropic / Claude pricing · Google Gemini API pricing · DeepSeek API pricing, via TokenScale’s nightly check. Active promotions are excluded. DeepSeek rows use the labelled peak rate; off-peak is 50% lower outside 01:00–04:00 and 06:00–10:00 UTC, Monday through Friday, with weekends and all other hours off-peak. Creative rates: Black Forest Labs · Runway · ElevenLabs · public provider docs and creator reports, checked June 2026 and not yet re-verified.