AI API Cost Comparison 2026: Every Major Model, Every Price, Every Scenario
The Master Price Table
Every major AI model API, input and output pricing per million tokens, ranked cheapest to most expensive. June 2026 pricing:
| Model | Provider | Input / 1M | Output / 1M | Total / 1M* | vs GPT-4o |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GLM-4-Flash | Zhipu / AIWave | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 | -100% |
| DeepSeek V4-Flash | DeepSeek / AIWave | $0.14 | $0.55 | $0.69 | -94% |
| DeepSeek V4-Pro | DeepSeek / AIWave | $0.27 | $1.10 | $1.37 | -89% |
| Kimi K2.6 | Moonshot / AIWave | $0.70 | $2.80 | $3.50 | -72% |
| GLM-5.1 | Zhipu / AIWave | $0.90 | $3.60 | $4.50 | -64% |
| ERNIE 5.1 | Baidu / AIWave | $1.20 | $4.80 | $6.00 | -52% |
| GPT-4.1 | OpenAI | $2.00 | $8.00 | $10.00 | -20% |
| Claude 3.7 Sonnet | Anthropic | $3.00 | $15.00 | $18.00 | +44% |
| GPT-4o | OpenAI | $2.50 | $10.00 | $12.50 | — |
*Total = input + output price for a typical 1:1 token ratio scenario. Your ratio will vary by use case.
Scenario 1: AI Chatbot (Customer Support, 1M Messages/Month)
Assumptions: 800 input tokens per message (history + system prompt), 200 output tokens.
| Model | Monthly Tokens | Monthly Cost | Annual Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-4o | 800M in / 200M out | $4,000 | $48,000 |
| Claude 3.7 Sonnet | 800M in / 200M out | $5,400 | $64,800 |
| DeepSeek V4-Pro | 800M in / 200M out | $436 | $5,232 |
| GLM-4-Flash | 800M in / 200M out | $0 | $0 |
A $48K/year OpenAI bill drops to $5.2K on DeepSeek. Or $0 on GLM-4-Flash.
Scenario 2: AI Code Assistant (500K Completions/Month)
Assumptions: 2,000 input tokens (file context), 500 output tokens per completion.
| Model | Monthly Cost | Annual Cost |
|---|---|---|
| GPT-4o | $5,000 | $60,000 |
| Claude 3.7 Sonnet | $6,750 | $81,000 |
| DeepSeek V4-Pro | $545 | $6,540 |
DeepSeek V4-Pro scores 92.6% on HumanEval vs GPT-4o's 90.2%. And costs $53,460 less per year. If you're a startup building a code tool, this is the difference between "we need Series A" and "we're profitable."
Scenario 3: Content Platform (100K Articles/Month)
Assumptions: 500 input tokens (instructions + examples), 1,500 output tokens per article.
| Model | Monthly Cost | Annual Cost |
|---|---|---|
| GPT-4o | $1,625 | $19,500 |
| DeepSeek V4-Pro | $178 | $2,136 |
| GLM-4-Flash | $0 | $0 |
Scenario 4: Small Developer (10M Input + 2M Output/Month)
The indie hacker / solo dev / small team tier. This is where most readers actually operate.
| Model | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
| GPT-4o | $45.00 |
| Claude 3.7 Sonnet | $60.00 |
| DeepSeek V4-Pro | $4.90 |
| DeepSeek V4-Flash | $2.50 |
$45/month vs $4.90/month. That's Netflix vs a coffee. For the same API format, the same integration effort, and models that score equivalently on benchmarks.
The Quality Question: Does Lower Price Mean Lower Quality?
| Model | MMLU (Knowledge) | HumanEval (Code) | Chatbot Arena | Cost/M Tokens |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-4o | 88.7% | 90.2% | #5 | $12.50 |
| DeepSeek V4-Pro | 89.1% | 92.6% | #3 | $1.37 |
| GLM-5.1 | 86.2% | 88.9% | #12 | $4.50 |
| GLM-4-Flash | 78.4% | 82.1% | #35 | $0.00 |
The model with the highest benchmark scores is the second cheapest. Price does not equal quality in the AI API market. It equals brand, infrastructure cost structure, and competitive pressure.
The Hybrid Strategy: Don't Pick One Model
Smart teams don't use one model. They route tasks by complexity:
Task complexity routing:
Simple (classification, summarization) → GLM-4-Flash ($0)
Standard (chat, content, most features) → DeepSeek V4-Pro ($1.37/M)
Complex (reasoning, analysis, long docs) → GLM-5.1 / Kimi ($3.50-4.50/M)
Edge cases (where Chinese AI falls short) → GPT-4o ($12.50/M)
Blended cost at 60/30/8/2 split: ~$1.35 per million tokens
Pure GPT-4o: $12.50 per million tokens
Annual savings: 89%AIWave gives you all these models through one API key. No separate accounts. No separate billing. Route at the request level.
$4.90/Month vs $45/Month. Same Quality.
$5 free credit. Compare all 12 models side by side. One API key.
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