The pricing desk

Know the real cost of the AI you are about to buy.

An independent desk for current prices, ranked comparisons, and the jobs people are actually searching. We hide dated briefings instead of leaving last quarter’s advice on the homepage.

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New · GPT-6 Astra

The $20 workload: when GPT-6 Astra earns its premium

Official pricing, independent tests, safety caveats and a direct comparison with GPT-5.6 Sol.

Read the GPT-6 Astra verdict

Wires & labs

SiliconANGLE AIEnterprise storage becomes AI memory as privately run models close in on the frontier The DecoderAI beats licensed accountants on speed and accuracy, but still can't close the books without supervision The Verge AIAI music maker Suno now generates spoken words The DecoderMicrosoft AI releases new transcription and text-to-speech models for voice agents BBC TechnologyOpenAI fires workers for 'mishandling sensitive information'ABC News Australia TechnologyRogue OpenAI agent accessed second NSW government website arXiv cs.AIWhen Do Causal World Models Help Modular LLM Agents arXiv cs.AIFrom Proposal to Verified Effect: Praxa, an Evidence-Bound Harness for Governed AI Agent Execution arXiv cs.CLThe First Token Is Not the Verdict: Hidden Costs of Reading LLM Judges Without Generating arXiv cs.CLMeasuring Human-Like Bias in LLMs? A Critique of Human-Derived Bias Constructs in LLM Evaluation arXiv cs.LGContingent Exposure Routing for Financial AI: Outage Risk and the Cost of Indivisible Decisions arXiv cs.LGAttention Manifolds: Steering or Blocking Language Models by Editing Learned B-Spline Surfaces OpenRouter BlogLangChain vs CrewAI: Orchestration Compared to OpenRouter-Native Routing NVIDIA Generative AI BlogHow NVIDIA GPUs Help Accelerate OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra Ultrafast SiliconANGLE AIReport: Anthropic targets pre-Thanksgiving IPO launch, despite warning of AI’s ‘existential risks’AWS Machine Learning BlogScaling cloud migrations with agentic AI on Amazon Bedrock AgentCore The Verge AIOpenAI’s new agent is a shot at Meta — but can it compete with free?TechCrunch AIMusk’s AI chatbot Grok reportedly encouraged Trump to capture Venezuela’s president SiliconANGLE AIEnterprise storage becomes AI memory as privately run models close in on the frontier The DecoderAI beats licensed accountants on speed and accuracy, but still can't close the books without supervision The Verge AIAI music maker Suno now generates spoken words The DecoderMicrosoft AI releases new transcription and text-to-speech models for voice agents BBC TechnologyOpenAI fires workers for 'mishandling sensitive information'ABC News Australia TechnologyRogue OpenAI agent accessed second NSW government website arXiv cs.AIWhen Do Causal World Models Help Modular LLM Agents arXiv cs.AIFrom Proposal to Verified Effect: Praxa, an Evidence-Bound Harness for Governed AI Agent Execution arXiv cs.CLThe First Token Is Not the Verdict: Hidden Costs of Reading LLM Judges Without Generating arXiv cs.CLMeasuring Human-Like Bias in LLMs? A Critique of Human-Derived Bias Constructs in LLM Evaluation arXiv cs.LGContingent Exposure Routing for Financial AI: Outage Risk and the Cost of Indivisible Decisions arXiv cs.LGAttention Manifolds: Steering or Blocking Language Models by Editing Learned B-Spline Surfaces OpenRouter BlogLangChain vs CrewAI: Orchestration Compared to OpenRouter-Native Routing NVIDIA Generative AI BlogHow NVIDIA GPUs Help Accelerate OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra Ultrafast SiliconANGLE AIReport: Anthropic targets pre-Thanksgiving IPO launch, despite warning of AI’s ‘existential risks’AWS Machine Learning BlogScaling cloud migrations with agentic AI on Amazon Bedrock AgentCore The Verge AIOpenAI’s new agent is a shot at Meta — but can it compete with free?TechCrunch AIMusk’s AI chatbot Grok reportedly encouraged Trump to capture Venezuela’s president

This desk

DeskGrok Bot review: access, cost, risks and alternatives DeskChatGPT Work vs Claude Cowork: Best Agent for Knowledge Work DeskManus vs Genspark: Which Super Agent Produces Better Value?DeskBest Autonomous AI Agents: Manus, Genspark, ChatGPT Work and More DeskManus Pricing and Credit Calculator: What Each Completed Task Costs DeskAgentic AI: permissions as a line item DeskGrok Bot review: access, cost, risks and alternatives DeskChatGPT Work vs Claude Cowork: Best Agent for Knowledge Work DeskManus vs Genspark: Which Super Agent Produces Better Value?DeskBest Autonomous AI Agents: Manus, Genspark, ChatGPT Work and More DeskManus Pricing and Credit Calculator: What Each Completed Task Costs DeskAgentic AI: permissions as a line item

What search and traffic say buyers want

Start with a real buying question

Ranked from Search Console demand, real sessions and conversions on this site, and prices that moved this month. Open the one that matches what you are about to pay for.

Fresh briefings

All public guides

2026-10-01 · 12 min read

Cheapest LLM for AI Agents: 30 Models Ranked by Cost Per Run

Every current API model ranked by the cost of the same 12-step tool-calling run, a reliability tier list, the route-cheap-escalate-on-failure pattern with code, and when the flagship is cheaper per successful task.

2026-10-01 · 12 min read

AI Model Routing: How to Cut Costs Without Losing Quality

How to route AI requests to cheaper models intelligently — the technique used by companies spending millions on AI to stay profitable.

2026-10-01 · 8 min read

ChatGPT vs Claude: Which Costs Less in 2026?

A precise cost comparison between ChatGPT and Claude — $20 subscriptions on both sides, and per-token API rates — to find the cheaper option for your actual usage.

2026-10-01 · 12 min read

Multi-Model AI Strategy: How to Use Multiple Models Without Overpaying

How to build a multi-model AI strategy that gets the best quality from each provider while keeping total costs under control.

2026-09-12 · 8 min read

Codex Cloud vs Local Cost: GPT-5.3-Codex Pricing Compared

Prices the GPT-5.3-Codex API against ChatGPT subscription and self-hosted usage patterns, using the official 12-step reference run to show what a coding agent actually costs.

2026-09-12 · 7 min read

Token Cost Explained: What You're Actually Paying For

A plain-English guide to AI tokens, how they're counted, and exactly how to calculate your real costs.

Live comparisons

All public comparisons

2026-09-11

ChatGPT vs Cursor Cost: Which $20 Plan Is Worth It?

ChatGPT Plus and Cursor Pro both cost $20/month. One is a GPT-5.5 chat assistant, the other an AI editor running Claude Sonnet 5 and GPT-5.4. Here is which one to pay for.

2026-10-01

AI Subscription vs API Cost in 2026: Find Break-Even

A numeric cost comparison of a $20/month ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro subscription versus GPT-5.4 or Claude Sonnet 5 API usage, including the break-even math.

2026-09-11

Claude API vs Cursor Pro Cost in 2026: Which Is Cheaper?

Claude Sonnet 5 via API ($2/$10 per 1M tokens) versus the $20/month Cursor Pro subscription for professional software development — with real monthly numbers.

2026-09-11

Microsoft Copilot vs ChatGPT Plus: Which Is Better for Office Work?

Microsoft Copilot Pro is $30/month; ChatGPT Plus is $20. Both run OpenAI's GPT-5 models — the question is whether native Word, Excel and Outlook integration is worth $10 more.

2026-09-11

DeepSeek vs ChatGPT vs Claude: The $0 vs $20/Month vs API Decision

DeepSeek's chat is free. ChatGPT Plus and Claude Pro both cost $20/month. On the API, DeepSeek V4 Flash at $0.05/$0.16 per 1M tokens undercuts GPT-5.5 and Claude Sonnet 5 by 49x or more. A decision matrix for which surface fits your usage.

2026-09-11

Claude Free vs Pro: Is Claude Pro Worth $20/Month?

Claude's free tier gives you Claude Sonnet 5 with limits. Claude Pro costs $20/month and adds higher limits, Opus 5 and Claude Code. Here is what the upgrade actually adds and who should pay.

Start with the job

Coding

Editors, agents, accepted diffs

Writing

Drafts that survive review

Research

Cited briefs, not busy agents

Support

Resolved tickets, not chat volume

Agents

Permissions as a line item

Design

Approved assets, not generations

Training desk

Learn the model, then price it

140 free lessons across 25 courses. Every one ends in what the model costs and the cheapest way to get the same result — no sign-up, progress saved in your browser.

All tutorials

New to AI? Start here

AI From Zero6 lessons · 30 min · no sign-upSix short lessons and no account needed to try the examples. Finish one real task with AI today, learn when not to trust it, and find out whether you need to pay for anything at all.Which AI Should I Use?6 lessons · 36 min · no sign-upSix needs, not six brands. For each one: two or three candidate tools, a prompt you can run to feel the difference, and a plain verdict on where to start and when to move.How to Talk to AI5 lessons · 28 min · no sign-upOne three-part habit, five short lessons, no vocabulary to memorise. Get a usable answer on the first try more often, and know exactly what to say when you do not.10 Things With AI5 lessons · 32 min · no sign-upTen small, useful jobs — an email, a summary, a plan, a spreadsheet question — each one done in two minutes with a prompt you can paste, and a note on which ones a free account handles.When AI Is Wrong6 lessons · 35 min · no sign-upA fluent answer is not a checked answer. Six short lessons that teach you why a chat model can be confidently wrong, how to spot it, and the one thirty-second check that works every time.AI With PDFs5 lessons · 33 min · no sign-upUpload a document, ask it questions, summarise it to the length you want, pull out the action items, compare two versions, and know exactly where a free plan stops being enough.

One product, in depth

First Output 1016 lessons · 72 min · BeginnerSix lessons, six things you actually make. Start with one API call costing a fraction of a cent, finish with a working tool and a routing rule that keeps your bill boring.Claude 1018 lessons · 81 min · BeginnerEverything Anthropic's own Claude 101 teaches — plus what each plan and model actually costs, and the cheapest way to get the same result.ChatGPT 1018 lessons · 81 min · BeginnerLearn ChatGPT from zero, and learn exactly what each plan and model costs before you pay for one.Gemini 1018 lessons · 80 min · Beginner → IntermediateLearn what Gemini is, which model to pick, and what each plan and API call really costs before you pay Google a cent.DeepSeek 1018 lessons · 79 min · Beginner → IntermediateLearn the free chat app, the open-weight model family and the OpenAI-compatible API — and what each one actually costs.Mistral 1018 lessons · 72 min · BeginnerLe Chat, the Mistral model families, open weights, and what each one actually costs.Llama 1018 lessons · 79 min · Beginner → IntermediateOpen-weight models you can rent by the token or run yourself. Learn what that actually costs.Grok 1018 lessons · 73 min · Beginner → IntermediateLearn what Grok is, which model to pick, what it really costs, and how to keep the bill small.

Still worth opening

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Pricing changelog

Pricing · Oct 1, 2026OpenRouter Pricing: Fees, Business Plan, Batch and Routers (2026)OpenRouter bills provider rates plus a 5.5% credit fee, or 8% on the new Business plan. See Batch API discounts, BYOK, routers, shell and in-region costs.Pricing · Oct 1, 2026Jev Pricing: TypeSafe's Decision Model Cost per Million DecisionsJev costs $0.042 per million input tokens and output is free. See cost per million decisions, OpenRouter fees, and when Jev beats a cheap LLM.Compare · Oct 1, 2026AI Subscription vs API Cost in 2026: Find Break-EvenThis is the numeric cost page: the API is cheaper for most people. At GPT-5.4's $2.50/1M input and $15/1M output, a $20 ChatGPT Plus subscription breaks even around 3.5M tokens a month at a 3:1 input-to-output mix. Subscriptions win on convenience for daily chat; APIs win on cost for automation, agents and high-volume work, especially with GPT-5.4 mini at $0.75/$4.50.Compare · Oct 1, 2026OpenRouter vs Direct Provider APIs: Fees, Batch and ControlOpenRouter vs direct OpenAI, Anthropic and Google APIs compared on fees, batch discounts, routing, in-region routing and governance after September 2026.Worth it · Oct 1, 2026Is Jev Worth It? TypeSafe's Decision Model Cost VerdictJev is worth it where your code asks an LLM narrow questions and parses labels. See where it saves money, where it does not, and how to test it in a week.Best of · Oct 1, 2026Best AI for Coding on a BudgetAI coding tools ranked by what you actually pay: free editor tiers, the $20 subscriptions, and the cheapest APIs that still handle agent tool calls.Guide · Oct 1, 2026Cheapest LLM for AI Agents: 30 Models Ranked by Cost Per RunEvery current API model ranked by the cost of the same 12-step tool-calling run, a reliability tier list, the route-cheap-escalate-on-failure pattern with code, and when the flagship is cheaper per successful task.Guide · Oct 1, 2026AI Model Routing: How to Cut Costs Without Losing QualityHow to route AI requests to cheaper models intelligently — the technique used by companies spending millions on AI to stay profitable.

How this desk stays honest

01Catalogue API prices are refreshed through the day. If a figure is more than two weeks old, we mark it stale instead of leaving it looking current.
02News briefings leave the public desk after three weeks. Evergreen money pages stay listed while the API catalogue is Live or Recent. We do not bump dates just to look current.
03The questions above are the buys people are actually weighing. New comparisons appear here while they are still current.

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