AI API Pricing: Complete Cost Comparison 2026
The cost of AI inference has dropped dramatically. Here’s every major AI API’s pricing compared.
Pricing Comparison
| Provider | Model | Input ($/1M) | Output ($/1M) | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | GPT-4o | $2.50 | $10.00 | 128K |
| OpenAI | GPT-4o-mini | $0.15 | $0.60 | 128K |
| OpenAI | o4-mini | $1.10 | $4.40 | 200K |
| Anthropic | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | $3.00 | $15.00 | 200K |
| Anthropic | Claude 3.5 Haiku | $0.25 | $1.25 | 200K |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash | $0.15 | $0.60 | 1M | |
| Gemini 2.5 Pro | $1.25 | $10.00 | 1M | |
| DeepSeek | V3 | $0.27 | $1.10 | 128K |
| Mistral | Large 3 | $2.00 | $6.00 | 128K |
Cost by Use Case
Chatbot (1M conversations/mo, 1K tokens each):
- GPT-4o-mini: ~$750/month
- Claude 3.5 Haiku: ~$1,500/month
- Gemini 2.5 Flash: ~$750/month
- DeepSeek V3: ~$685/month
Document analysis (100K pages/mo, 5K tokens each):
- GPT-4o: ~$12,500/month
- Claude 3.5 Sonnet: ~$15,000/month
- Gemini 2.5 Pro: ~$6,250/month
Tips to Reduce Costs
- Use the cheapest model that meets quality requirements
- Cache repeated prompts
- Use batch APIs for non-real-time workloads
- Consider self-hosting for high-volume, low-latency needs
- Monitor token usage with a usage dashboard
FAQ
Q: Which AI API is cheapest?
A: DeepSeek V3 and GPT-4o-mini offer the best value. Gemini 2.5 Flash has the largest context at lowest price.
Q: OpenAI or Anthropic?
A: GPT-4o for multimodal. Claude 3.5 Sonnet for long-form reasoning and coding. Test both.