AIUpdateWatch Intelligence

AI model cost and value tracker

Compare 27 hosted and open-weight models. Start with plain-English uses and subscriptions, then switch to technical pricing, benchmark evidence and local deployment tradeoffs.

Saturday complete daily edition: Saturday, August 22, 2026 · Data cutoff Aug 22, 2026, 9:15 AM (America/New_York)

Dual-view model database

See cost and capability at the level you need

Everyday User View explains practical uses, subscriptions and whether the price appears worthwhile.

Cost versus value

Which models offer more capability for less cost?

The matrix plots only models with comparable cost and benchmark evidence. The full table still lists all 27 tracked models—including 8 downloadable open-weight options—and explains why an unplotted model is not yet comparable.

Managed API value matrixX-axis uses a 75% input / 25% output blended USD price per one million tokens. Y-axis converts available category grades into a 0–100 capability index.
Managed API cost versus performance scatter plotModels closer to the upper-left combine lower blended API cost with stronger available benchmark evidence.Best-value zone406080100$0.0$5.4$11$16$22Evidence-backed capability indexBlended USD API cost per 1M tokensOpenAI GPT-5.6 Sol — Provisional premium-priced; capability 82; blended cost $11.25GPT-5.6 SolOpenAI GPT-5.6 Terra — Premium-priced; capability 70; blended cost $5.63GPT-5.6 TerraOpenAI GPT-5.6 Luna — Provisional premium-priced; capability 82; blended cost $2.25GPT-5.6 LunaAnthropic Claude Fable 5 — Premium-priced; capability 90; blended cost $20Claude Fable 5xAI Grok 4.5 — Premium-priced; capability 90; blended cost $3Grok 4.5DeepSeek V4 Flash — Provisional outstanding value; capability 75; blended cost $0.18V4 Flash
Exact current systemRecent same-family proxy
Open-weight deployment matrixOpen weights have no per-token license fee, so the X-axis uses active parameters as a rough compute proxy. Lower is generally easier to host, but total parameters, quantization, hardware and utilization still matter.
Open-weight compute size versus performance scatter plotModels closer to the upper-left combine fewer active parameters with stronger available benchmark evidence. This is not a dollar cost estimate.Efficient-value zone4060801000.0B3.4B6.7B10.1B13.4BEvidence-backed capability indexActive parameters (billions; compute proxy)OpenAI gpt-oss-120b — Potentially strong locally; capability 50; 5.1B active parametersgpt-oss-120bNVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super 120B-A12B — Potentially strong locally; capability 50; 12B active parametersNemotron 3 Super 120B-A12B

Free weights do not mean free operation. Budget for accelerators, electricity, storage, engineering, security, monitoring and model upgrades.

How AIUpdateWatch calculates “Value for Money”
  1. Performance uses A/B/C real-world grades from the six benchmark categories: A = 90 points, B = 70 and C = 50.
  2. Exact current-system results are preferred. A recent result from the same model family may be used as a clearly labelled lower-confidence proxy.
  3. Managed API cost uses 75% input and 25% output pricing to approximate a document-heavy business workload.
  4. The Value Index divides capability by the square root of cost, then normalizes the best eligible model to 100. It is directional—not a purchase recommendation.
  5. CNY prices are not mixed with USD prices, and models without comparable evidence are shown as unrated rather than receiving invented scores.

Plain-English comparison

Which AI model is practical—and worth the cost?

19 hosted + 8 open-weight
“Free model” usually means free weights—not free operation.

A consumer subscription, an API bill and a self-hosted open model are different cost structures. Open-weight deployments still require hardware or cloud GPUs, electricity, storage, engineering, security, monitoring and upgrades.

DeepSeek
China

V4 Pro

Best for long-context reasoning, coding and agent workflows.

Value for moneyPerformance evidence pendingThe model has a price, but no exact or recent same-family result in the six-category benchmark registry.
Typical consumer entry pointRegional app access or API billing (opens in a new tab)No directly comparable US monthly consumer subscription is verified in this tracker. Check the official provider page.

Where it is available: DeepSeek API, app and web

Important limitation: Official August 13 production revision DeepSeek-V4-Pro-0813. Prices shown are the current pre-August 17 tariff; announced peak/off-peak rates are future-dated. No independent 0813 benchmark package was verified by the edition cutoff.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
Anthropic

Claude Opus 5

Best for long-horizon reasoning, interactive agent work and complex professional tasks.

Value for moneyPerformance evidence pendingThe model has a price, but no exact or recent same-family result in the six-category benchmark registry.
Typical consumer entry pointClaude Pro — $20/mo (opens in a new tab)Consumer app subscription in supported regions. API usage is billed separately.

Where it is available: Anthropic API, Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud and Microsoft Foundry

Important limitation: ARC-AGI-3 performance is benchmark-specific. Anthropic effort labels are provider-specific and should not be treated as standardized units of compute across vendors.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
OpenAI

GPT-5.6 Sol

Best for difficult planning, research and multi-step professional work.

Value for moneyProvisional premium-priced16/100 value indexCapability may be strong, but the comparable API price is high relative to other plotted models. The performance side uses a recent same-family proxy rather than the exact current model.
Typical consumer entry pointChatGPT Plus — $20/mo (opens in a new tab)Consumer app subscription. Exact model access and usage limits can vary; API usage is billed separately.

Where it is available: API and eligible ChatGPT plans

Important limitation: Launch comparisons are provider-published; confirm task-specific performance independently.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
OpenAI

GPT-5.6 Terra

Best for everyday writing, email drafting, analysis and balanced cost.

Value for moneyPremium-priced20/100 value indexCapability may be strong, but the comparable API price is high relative to other plotted models.
Typical consumer entry pointChatGPT Plus — $20/mo (opens in a new tab)Consumer app subscription. Exact model access and usage limits can vary; API usage is billed separately.

Where it is available: API and eligible ChatGPT plans

Important limitation: Use current API documentation for limits and regional availability.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
OpenAI

GPT-5.6 Luna

Best for quick drafts, summaries and routine high-volume tasks.

Value for moneyProvisional premium-priced36/100 value indexCapability may be strong, but the comparable API price is high relative to other plotted models. The performance side uses a recent same-family proxy rather than the exact current model.
Typical consumer entry pointChatGPT Plus — $20/mo (opens in a new tab)Consumer app subscription. Exact model access and usage limits can vary; API usage is billed separately.

Where it is available: API and eligible ChatGPT plans

Important limitation: Lower price does not imply best performance for every workload.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
Anthropic

Claude Fable 5

Best for long documents, careful editing and sustained project work.

Value for moneyPremium-priced13/100 value indexCapability may be strong, but the comparable API price is high relative to other plotted models.
Typical consumer entry pointClaude Pro — $20/mo (opens in a new tab)Consumer app subscription in supported regions. API usage is billed separately.

Where it is available: Claude and API where available

Important limitation: Anthropic documents additional safeguards and retention behavior for Mythos-class traffic.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
xAI

Grok 4.5

Best for coding, agent-style tasks and workflows that use current information.

Value for moneyPremium-priced35/100 value indexCapability may be strong, but the comparable API price is high relative to other plotted models.
Typical consumer entry pointX Premium+ — $40/mo (opens in a new tab)US web price shown. Grok access, limits, taxes and local pricing can differ.

Where it is available: xAI API and Grok products

Important limitation: Requests exceeding 200K context use higher prices: $4 input and $12 output per 1M tokens.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
Google

Gemini 3.5 Flash

Best for fast multimodal work, Google users and quick everyday assistance.

Value for moneyPrice verification neededNo stable comparable input-and-output API price is available in the current registry.
Typical consumer entry pointGoogle AI Pro — $19.99/mo (opens in a new tab)US web price shown. Regional pricing, benefits and exact model access can differ.

Where it is available: Gemini ecosystem and developer services

Important limitation: This edition did not capture a stable region-neutral official API price; verify before purchase.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
DeepSeek
China

V4 Flash

Best for lower-cost long-document and technical workflows where regional access works.

Value for moneyProvisional outstanding value100/100 value indexHigh evidence-backed capability relative to the blended USD API price. The performance side uses a recent same-family proxy rather than the exact current model.
Typical consumer entry pointRegional app access or API billing (opens in a new tab)No directly comparable US monthly consumer subscription is verified in this tracker. Check the official provider page.

Where it is available: DeepSeek API through the explicit deepseek-v4-flash and deepseek-v4-pro model names; legacy aliases are past their retirement deadline.

Important limitation: DeepSeek primary documentation identifies April 24 as the V4 Preview API availability date. Later third-party score snapshots vary and should be read with their evaluation date and methodology.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
Alibaba Cloud
China

Qwen3.7-Max

Best for complex reasoning, coding and work inside the Alibaba Cloud ecosystem.

Value for moneyCompare in source currencyThe tracker does not convert CNY pricing into USD because exchange rates and regional billing change.
Typical consumer entry pointRegional app access or API billing (opens in a new tab)No directly comparable US monthly consumer subscription is verified in this tracker. Check the official provider page.

Where it is available: Alibaba Cloud Model Studio; regional endpoints vary

Important limitation: Pricing, endpoint names and availability differ between China and international Model Studio regions.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
Moonshot AI
China

Kimi K3

Best for very long documents, software work and extended agent-style tasks.

Value for moneyCompare in source currencyThe tracker does not convert CNY pricing into USD because exchange rates and regional billing change.
Typical consumer entry pointRegional app access or API billing (opens in a new tab)No directly comparable US monthly consumer subscription is verified in this tracker. Check the official provider page.

Where it is available: Kimi API platform; region and account eligibility vary

Important limitation: Prices are official CNY rates per million tokens and must not be displayed as USD.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
Zhipu AI
China

GLM-5.2

Best for long-running coding and autonomous workflow experiments.

Value for moneyCompare in source currencyThe tracker does not convert CNY pricing into USD because exchange rates and regional billing change.
Typical consumer entry pointRegional app access or API billing (opens in a new tab)No directly comparable US monthly consumer subscription is verified in this tracker. Check the official provider page.

Where it is available: Zhipu BigModel platform; regional access varies

Important limitation: Provider capability statements require independent task-specific reproduction.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
Baidu
China

ERNIE 5.0

Best for Chinese-language and multimodal tasks in Baidu services.

Value for moneyPerformance evidence pendingThe model has a price, but no exact or recent same-family result in the six-category benchmark registry.
Typical consumer entry pointRegional app access or API billing (opens in a new tab)No directly comparable US monthly consumer subscription is verified in this tracker. Check the official provider page.

Where it is available: Baidu Qianfan and ERNIE services; international catalog availability varies

Important limitation: The displayed API price is from Baidu’s international Qianfan catalog; China-region billing differs.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
ByteDance
China

Doubao Seed 2.1

Best for production-oriented coding, agent and multimodal tasks in Volcengine.

Value for moneyCompare in source currencyThe tracker does not convert CNY pricing into USD because exchange rates and regional billing change.
Typical consumer entry pointRegional app access or API billing (opens in a new tab)No directly comparable US monthly consumer subscription is verified in this tracker. Check the official provider page.

Where it is available: Volcengine Ark; regional availability varies

Important limitation: Volcengine pricing uses tiered regional tables; verify the exact model ID and input-length tier.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
MiniMax
China

MiniMax-M3

Best for coding, reasoning and long-context work through compatible endpoints.

Value for moneyPrice verification neededNo stable comparable input-and-output API price is available in the current registry.
Typical consumer entry pointRegional app access or API billing (opens in a new tab)No directly comparable US monthly consumer subscription is verified in this tracker. Check the official provider page.

Where it is available: MiniMax API platform and compatible endpoints

Important limitation: Use the current regional pricing table and distinguish API pay-as-you-go from Token Plan subscriptions.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
StepFun
China

Step 3.7 Flash

Best for lower-cost multimodal reasoning and computer-use-style tasks.

Value for moneyCompare in source currencyThe tracker does not convert CNY pricing into USD because exchange rates and regional billing change.
Typical consumer entry pointRegional app access or API billing (opens in a new tab)No directly comparable US monthly consumer subscription is verified in this tracker. Check the official provider page.

Where it is available: StepFun open platform; regional access varies

Important limitation: Official prices are CNY per million tokens. Confirm current quotas and model lifecycle notices.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
Tencent
China

Hunyuan A13B

Best for efficient reasoning in Tencent Cloud and Chinese enterprise workflows.

Value for moneyCompare in source currencyThe tracker does not convert CNY pricing into USD because exchange rates and regional billing change.
Typical consumer entry pointRegional app access or API billing (opens in a new tab)No directly comparable US monthly consumer subscription is verified in this tracker. Check the official provider page.

Where it is available: Tencent Cloud Hunyuan / migration path to TokenHub

Important limitation: Tencent is migrating newer model access toward TokenHub; verify the active platform before integration.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
Alibaba Cloud
China

Qwen-Image-3.0

Best for images containing text, interfaces, diagrams and dense layouts.

Value for moneyPrice verification neededNo stable comparable input-and-output API price is available in the current registry.
Typical consumer entry pointRegional app access or API billing (opens in a new tab)No directly comparable US monthly consumer subscription is verified in this tracker. Check the official provider page.

Where it is available: Qwen and Alibaba Cloud ecosystem; verify regional endpoint availability

Important limitation: Capabilities and examples are provider-published; independent benchmark reproduction is pending.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
Alibaba Cloud
China

Qwen-Audio-3.0-TTS Flash / Plus

Best for real-time or higher-fidelity text-to-speech generation.

Value for moneyPrice verification neededNo stable comparable input-and-output API price is available in the current registry.
Typical consumer entry pointRegional app access or API billing (opens in a new tab)No directly comparable US monthly consumer subscription is verified in this tracker. Check the official provider page.

Where it is available: Alibaba Cloud Model Studio; rollout and regional availability may vary

Important limitation: The 300ms-level first-packet latency and multilingual results are provider-reported; verify independently for production workloads.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
Meta
Open weights

Llama 4 Scout

Best for very long context and multimodal local or private-cloud deployment.

Value for moneyLocal test requiredThe weights are free to obtain, but hardware, power, hosting and operations determine total cost.
Acquisition costModel weights: $0 license price (opens in a new tab)Compute is not free. You still pay for hardware or cloud GPUs, electricity, storage, engineering, security and maintenance.

Local deployment: Meta says an Int4 version fits on one NVIDIA H100 GPU.

Where it is available: Downloadable open weights through Meta and ecosystem partners

Important limitation: The weights have no per-token license fee, but a practical deployment still needs GPU capacity, storage, power, security and operations.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
Meta
Open weights

Llama 4 Maverick

Best for higher-capability multimodal workloads with open-weight control.

Value for moneyLocal test requiredThe weights are free to obtain, but hardware, power, hosting and operations determine total cost.
Acquisition costModel weights: $0 license price (opens in a new tab)Compute is not free. You still pay for hardware or cloud GPUs, electricity, storage, engineering, security and maintenance.

Local deployment: Meta describes deployment on a single H100 DGX host or distributed infrastructure.

Where it is available: Downloadable open weights through Meta and ecosystem partners

Important limitation: Maverick stores 400B total parameters even though 17B are active per token, so hosting is materially heavier than the active-parameter figure alone suggests.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
OpenAI
Open weights

gpt-oss-20b

Best for local reasoning on constrained hardware and rapid private experimentation.

Value for moneyLocal test requiredThe weights are free to obtain, but hardware, power, hosting and operations determine total cost.
Acquisition costModel weights: $0 license price (opens in a new tab)Compute is not free. You still pay for hardware or cloud GPUs, electricity, storage, engineering, security and maintenance.

Local deployment: OpenAI says the model can run with about 16 GB of memory.

Where it is available: Free downloadable weights; self-hosted or third-party hosted

Important limitation: OpenAI does not serve this model through ChatGPT or the OpenAI API. The operator pays for compute, storage, monitoring and maintenance.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
OpenAI
Open weights

gpt-oss-120b

Best for high-capacity private reasoning and agent workflows.

Value for moneyPotentially strong locallyThe weights are free to obtain, but hardware, power, hosting and operations determine total cost.
Acquisition costModel weights: $0 license price (opens in a new tab)Compute is not free. You still pay for hardware or cloud GPUs, electricity, storage, engineering, security and maintenance.

Local deployment: OpenAI says the model fits on one 80 GB GPU.

Where it is available: Free downloadable weights; self-hosted or third-party hosted

Important limitation: The weights are free, but OpenAI says the model needs about 80 GB of memory; total deployment cost depends on utilization and operations.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
Mistral AI
Open weights

Ministral 3 14B

Best for smaller local enterprise assistant with multimodal support.

Value for moneyLocal test requiredThe weights are free to obtain, but hardware, power, hosting and operations determine total cost.
Acquisition costModel weights: $0 license price (opens in a new tab)Compute is not free. You still pay for hardware or cloud GPUs, electricity, storage, engineering, security and maintenance.

Local deployment: Dense 14B model; actual memory depends on precision, quantization and runtime.

Where it is available: Downloadable weights and hosted ecosystem endpoints

Important limitation: A free model license does not make production inference free. Quantization, hardware, throughput and support requirements determine cost.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
Mistral AI
Open weights

Mistral Large 3

Best for frontier-class open-weight enterprise customization.

Value for moneyLocal test requiredThe weights are free to obtain, but hardware, power, hosting and operations determine total cost.
Acquisition costModel weights: $0 license price (opens in a new tab)Compute is not free. You still pay for hardware or cloud GPUs, electricity, storage, engineering, security and maintenance.

Local deployment: Data-center-class sparse model; deployment normally requires substantial accelerator infrastructure.

Where it is available: Downloadable weights and hosted ecosystem endpoints

Important limitation: The model has 675B total parameters and 41B active parameters; storage and serving requirements remain substantial despite sparse activation.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
Google
Open weights

Gemma 3 27B

Best for multilingual local assistant, document and image workflows.

Value for moneyLocal test requiredThe weights are free to obtain, but hardware, power, hosting and operations determine total cost.
Acquisition costModel weights: $0 license price (opens in a new tab)Compute is not free. You still pay for hardware or cloud GPUs, electricity, storage, engineering, security and maintenance.

Local deployment: Dense 27B model; actual memory depends on precision, quantization and runtime.

Where it is available: Downloadable open model through Google and ecosystem partners

Important limitation: The model is free to obtain under Google’s terms, but businesses must still budget for hardware, inference software, monitoring and updates.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)
NVIDIA
Open weights

Nemotron 3 Super 120B-A12B

Best for efficient long-running multi-agent and code workflows.

Value for moneyPotentially strong locallyThe weights are free to obtain, but hardware, power, hosting and operations determine total cost.
Acquisition costModel weights: $0 license price (opens in a new tab)Compute is not free. You still pay for hardware or cloud GPUs, electricity, storage, engineering, security and maintenance.

Local deployment: 120B total / 12B active sparse model; optimized for NVIDIA Blackwell and data-center deployment.

Where it is available: Open weights, datasets and recipes; self-hosting and NVIDIA ecosystem deployment

Important limitation: NVIDIA optimizes the model for its accelerator stack. Cost and throughput can differ substantially on other hardware and runtimes.

Check official model information (opens in a new tab)

A simple way to choose

Low or irregular usage

A managed subscription or API often costs less than buying and maintaining dedicated hardware.

High, steady usage

Open weights can become attractive when utilization is high enough to spread infrastructure and engineering costs across many requests.

Privacy or customization first

Local deployment may be worth a higher operating cost when data residency, offline access, fine-tuning or control matter more than convenience.