The LLM Pricing Landscape in 2026
AI API pricing has become incredibly competitive. What cost $0.03/1K tokens a year ago now costs a fraction of that. But with 14+ models across 6+ providers, comparing costs is harder than ever.
Price Comparison Table (per 1M tokens)
| Model | Provider | Input $/1M | Output $/1M |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 1.5 Flash | $0.075 | $0.30 | |
| GPT-4o mini | OpenAI | $0.15 | $0.60 |
| Claude 3 Haiku | Anthropic | $0.25 | $1.25 |
| DeepSeek V3 | DeepSeek | $0.27 | $1.10 |
| Llama 3.1 (Groq) | Meta/Groq | $0.59 | $0.79 |
| Gemini 1.5 Pro | $1.25 | $5.00 | |
| Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Anthropic | $3.00 | $15.00 |
| Mistral Large | Mistral | $3.00 | $9.00 |
| GPT-4o | OpenAI | $5.00 | $15.00 |
| GPT-4 Turbo | OpenAI | $10.00 | $30.00 |
| Claude 3 Opus | Anthropic | $15.00 | $75.00 |
Cost per 10,000 Requests (1K input + 500 output tokens each)
A typical chatbot request uses ~1,000 input tokens and generates ~500 output tokens. At 10,000 requests/day:
- Cheapest: Gemini 1.5 Flash — ~$2.25/day ($67.50/mo)
- Mid-range: Claude 3.5 Sonnet — ~$105/day ($3,150/mo)
- Premium: Claude 3 Opus — ~$187.50/day ($5,625/mo)
When to Use Which Model
- High volume, simple tasks: Gemini 1.5 Flash or GPT-4o mini
- Code generation: Claude 3.5 Sonnet or GPT-4o
- Complex reasoning: Claude 3 Opus or GPT-4 Turbo
- Long context (100K+ tokens): Gemini 1.5 Pro (2M context window)
- Open source / self-hosted: Llama 3.1 405B via Groq or Together
Calculate Your Costs
Use our AI API Cost Calculator to estimate per-request, daily, and monthly costs based on your actual token usage and volume.