Edition May 2026 · Method v1.0
Kingy AI Price Index
Small-model prices fell 20.3% in May
The median small model cost $0.37 per million tokens, down from $0.46 in April. DeepSeek is now counted.
Prices in effect May 1, 2026, from archived official pages · Compared with April 2026 (reconstructed, prices of April 1, 2026, 30 days earlier)
This month’s numbers
API price per million tokens Median of each lab’s list price, blended 3 input : 1 output
Subscription price per month Median US list price, monthly billing, before tax
Who charges what
Each lab’s list price in this edition, cheapest first. The dark rule is this month’s median; the grey rule is last month’s. Hover or tab to a bar for input and output prices.
Frontier models median $3.75
Each lab's most capable model · US dollars per million tokens, blended
Mid-range models median $1.41
Each lab's balanced workhorse model · US dollars per million tokens, blended
Small models median $0.37
Each lab's low-cost, high-volume model · US dollars per million tokens, blended
Index level by edition
Each tier’s median as a share of its September 2026 value (= 100). Lower means cheaper. Months before September 2026 are reconstructed from archived official pages; a line breaks where fewer than three labs had a verified price.
- Frontier models
- Mid-range models
- Small models
October 2026: Frontier models 88.9 Mid-range models 100.0 Small models 50.0
Every edition: median price and index level (34 months)
| Edition | Frontier models | Mid-range models | Small models | Standard plan | Top plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| October 2026 | $4.00 (88.9) | $4.00 (100.0) | $0.26 (50.0) | $20.00 (100.0) | $200.00 (100.0) |
| September 2026* | $4.50 (100.0) | $4.00 (100.0) | $0.53 (100.0) | $20.00 (100.0) | $200.00 (100.0) |
| August 2026* | $4.50 (100.0) | $4.00 (100.0) | $0.65 (123.8) | — | — |
| July 2026* | $3.03 (67.4) | $3.19 (79.7) | $0.46 (88.1) | — | — |
| June 2026* | $4.50 (100.0) | $3.38 (84.4) | $0.46 (88.1) | — | — |
| May 2026* | $3.75 (83.3) | $1.41 (35.2) | $0.37 (70.3) | — | — |
| April 2026* | $3.75 (83.3) | $1.41 (35.2) | $0.46 (88.1) | — | — |
| March 2026* | $4.66 (103.5) | $0.96 (24.1) | $0.23 (42.9) | — | — |
| February 2026* | $4.66 (103.5) | $0.96 (24.1) | $0.23 (42.9) | — | — |
| January 2026* | $4.66 (103.5) | $0.96 (24.1) | $0.23 (42.9) | — | — |
| December 2025* | $3.97 (88.2) | $0.83 (20.6) | $0.18 (33.3) | — | — |
| November 2025* | $3.44 (76.4) | $0.80 (20.0) | $0.18 (33.3) | — | — |
| October 2025* | $3.44 (76.4) | $0.80 (20.0) | $0.18 (33.3) | — | — |
| September 2025* | $3.44 (76.4) | $0.83 (20.6) | $0.26 (50.0) | — | — |
| August 2025* | $3.47 (77.1) | $0.85 (21.3) | $0.26 (50.0) | — | — |
| July 2025* | $3.47 (77.1) | $0.83 (20.6) | $0.26 (50.0) | — | — |
| June 2025* | $3.47 (77.1) | $0.75 (18.8) | $0.26 (50.0) | — | — |
| May 2025* | $3.50 (77.8) | — | $0.35 (66.7) | — | — |
| April 2025* | $4.00 (88.9) | — | $0.37 (70.5) | — | — |
| March 2025* | $2.67 (59.3) | — | $0.37 (70.5) | — | — |
| February 2025* | $3.00 (66.7) | — | $0.26 (50.0) | — | — |
| January 2025* | $3.00 (66.7) | — | $0.28 (53.6) | — | — |
| December 2024* | $3.00 (66.7) | — | $0.28 (53.6) | — | — |
| November 2024* | $3.69 (81.9) | — | $0.28 (53.6) | — | — |
| October 2024* | $3.00 (66.7) | — | $0.28 (53.6) | — | — |
| September 2024* | $5.25 (116.7) | — | $0.38 (72.6) | — | — |
| August 2024* | $5.25 (116.7) | — | $0.51 (97.6) | — | — |
| July 2024* | $6.00 (133.3) | — | $0.64 (121.4) | — | — |
| June 2024* | $6.00 (133.3) | — | $0.64 (121.4) | — | — |
| May 2024* | $15.00 (333.3) | — | $0.75 (142.9) | — | — |
| April 2024* | $15.00 (333.3) | — | $0.75 (142.9) | — | — |
| March 2024* | — | — | — | — | — |
| February 2024* | — | — | — | — | — |
| January 2024* | — | — | — | — | — |
Median price, with the index level in brackets; — means fewer than three verified prices. * Reconstructed from archived official pages.
What changed since April
None of the 12 models and plans in both editions changed its list price. Every move in the index came from labs replacing a model or plan with a new one.
New in the basket
- Frontier models Anthropic: Claude Opus 4.6 $10.00 replaced by Claude Opus 4.7 $10.00
- Frontier models DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.2 $0.32 replaced by DeepSeek V4 Pro $0.54
- Small models DeepSeek: none replaced by DeepSeek V4 Flash $0.18
- Frontier models OpenAI: GPT-5.4 $5.63 replaced by GPT-5.5 $11.25
Every price in this edition
Each figure is the list price on the official page at capture time. Open a row’s date for the exact text Kingy read.
| Tier | Model | Input | Output | Blended | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier models | DeepSeek V4 Pro DeepSeek | $0.435 | $0.87 | $0.54 | Archived April 29, 2026Official source · Internet Archive copy “deepseek-v4-flash (1) deepseek-v4-pro BASE URL (OpenAI Format) https://api.deepseek.com BASE URL (Anthropic Format) https://api.deepseek.com … only Non-thinking mode only PRICING 1M INPUT TOKENS (CACHE HIT) (2) $0.0028 $0.003625 (75% off (3) ) $0.0145 1M INPUT TOKENS (CACHE MISS) $0.14 $0.435 (75% off (3) ) $1.74 1M OUTPUT TOKENS $0.28 $0.87” Tier evidence: “MODEL VERSION DeepSeek-V4-Flash DeepSeek-V4-Pro” DeepSeek sold exactly two general-purpose models; under the method the higher-priced is its frontier model and the lower-priced its small model. Promotional price (75% off), charged to every paid customer on this date; the page also lists the regular price and says the discount runs until 2026-05-31 15:59 UTC. SHA-256 d4b98c13f1a31fe1… |
| Frontier models | Mistral Large 3 Mistral AI | $0.50 | $1.50 | $0.75 | Archived April 21, 2026Official source · Internet Archive copy “\"api_endpoint\":\"mistral-large-latest\",\"price\":[{\"value\":\"Input (/M tokens)\",\"price_dollar\":\"\u003cp\u003e$0.5\u003c/p\u003e\",\"price_euro\":\"\u003cp\u003e0.5\u0026euro;\u003c/p\u003e\",\"detail\":null,\"locale\":\"en\"},{\"value\":\"Output (/M tokens)\",\"price_dollar\":\"\u003cp\u003e$1.5” Tier evidence: “Open-weight, general-purpose, flagship multimodal and multilingual model.” SHA-256 827320c525a6ab0f… |
| Frontier models | Grok 4.20 xAI | $2.00 | $6.00 | $3.00 | Archived April 28, 2026Official source · Internet Archive copy “\"name\":\"grok-4.20-0309-reasoning\",\"version\":\"1.0\",\"inputModalities\":[1,2],\"outputModalities\":[1],\"promptTextTokenPrice\":\"$n20000\",\"promptImageTokenPrice\":\"$n20000\",\"promptTextTokenPriceLongContext\":\"$n40000\",\"cachedPromptTokenPrice\":\"$n2000\",\"cachedPromptTokenPriceLongContext\":\"$n4000\",\"completionTextTokenPrice\":\"$n60000” As published: input 20000, output 60000 (1/10,000 USD per 1M tokens, page data); converted to US dollars per million tokens (× 0.0001). Tier evidence: “\"name\":\"grok-4.20-0309-reasoning\"” xAI made no flagship claim on this date, so the newest model in its highest-priced general-purpose line (Grok 4: Grok 4.20 is its newest model) takes the frontier slot. xAI's docs page renders its price table from page data in units of 1/10,000 US dollar per million tokens (30000 is shown as $3.00; the August 2025 snapshot of the same page shows both). SHA-256 6a3d3e01c2d11e60… |
| Frontier models | Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview Google | $2.00 | $12.00 | $4.50 | Archived April 30, 2026Official source · Internet Archive copy “Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview gemini-3.1-pro-preview and gemini-3.1-pro-preview-customtools Try it in Google AI Studio The latest performance, inte … g. Standard Free Tier Paid Tier, per 1M tokens in USD Input price Not available $2.00, prompts <= 200k tokens $4.00, prompts > 200k tokens Output price (including thinking tokens) Not available $12.00” Tier evidence: “Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview gemini-3.1-pro-preview and gemini-3.1-pro-preview-customtools Try it in Google AI Studio The latest performance, intelligence, and usability improvements to the best model family in the world” Google made no flagship claim for one model on this date, so the newest model in its highest-priced line (Pro) takes the frontier slot. Paid previews count. Prompts up to the shortest context band (128K or 200K tokens). SHA-256 aea0a3d186c79a62… |
| Frontier models | Claude Opus 4.7 Anthropic | $5.00 | $25.00 | $10.00 | Archived April 28, 2026Official source · Internet Archive copy “Claude Opus 4.7 $5 / MTok $6.25 / MTok $10 / MTok $0.50 / MTok $25 / MTok” Tier evidence: “Feature Claude Opus 4.7 Claude Sonnet 4.6 Claude Haiku 4.5 Description Our most capable generally available model for complex reasoning and agentic coding” SHA-256 29e2853e07f442a9… |
| Frontier models | GPT-5.5 OpenAI | $5.00 | $30.00 | $11.25 | Archived April 26, 2026Official source · Internet Archive copy “gpt-5.5 $5.00 $0.50 $30.00” Tier evidence: “use gpt-5.5 , our flagship model for complex reasoning and coding” SHA-256 7eb1c91734c007cc… |
| Mid-range models | Mistral Medium 3 Mistral AI | $0.40 | $2.00 | $0.80 | Archived April 21, 2026Official source · Internet Archive copy “\"api_endpoint\":\"mistral-medium-latest\",\"price\":[{\"value\":\"Input (/M tokens)\",\"price_dollar\":\"\u003cp\u003e$0.4\u003c/p\u003e\",\"price_euro\":\"\u003cp\u003e0.4\u0026euro;\u003c/p\u003e\",\"locale\":\"en\"},{\"value\":\"Output (/M tokens)\",\"price_dollar\":\"\u003cp\u003e$2” Tier evidence: “State-of-the-art performance. Simplified enterprise deployments. Cost-efficient.” Mistral describes Medium 3 as "State-of-the-art performance ... Cost-efficient", between Mistral Large and Mistral Small, so it takes the mid-range slot. SHA-256 827320c525a6ab0f… |
| Mid-range models | Gemini 3 Flash Preview Google | $0.50 | $3.00 | $1.13 | Archived April 30, 2026Official source · Internet Archive copy “Gemini 3 Flash Preview gemini-3-flash-preview Try it in Google AI Studio Our most intelligent model built for speed, combining frontier inte … ch and grounding. Standard Free Tier Paid Tier, per 1M tokens in USD Input price Free of charge $0.50 (text / image / video) $1.00 (audio) Output price (including thinking tokens) Free of charge $3.00” Tier evidence: “Gemini 3 Flash Preview gemini-3-flash-preview Try it in Google AI Studio Our most intelligent model built for speed, combining frontier intelligence with superior search and grounding” Flash is Google's line between Pro and Flash-Lite; its newest generally available or paid-preview model takes the mid-range slot. Prompts up to the shortest context band (128K or 200K tokens). SHA-256 aea0a3d186c79a62… |
| Mid-range models | GPT-5.4 mini OpenAI | $0.75 | $4.50 | $1.69 | Archived April 26, 2026Official source · Internet Archive copy “gpt-5.4-mini $0.75 $0.075 $4.50” Tier evidence: “choose a smaller variant like gpt-5.4-mini or gpt-5.4-nano” OpenAI names GPT-5.4 mini and GPT-5.4 nano as its smaller variants; the lower-priced (nano) is its small model and mini sits between it and the flagship. SHA-256 7eb1c91734c007cc… |
| Mid-range models | Claude Sonnet 4.6 Anthropic | $3.00 | $15.00 | $6.00 | Archived April 28, 2026Official source · Internet Archive copy “Claude Sonnet 4.6 $3 / MTok $3.75 / MTok $6 / MTok $0.30 / MTok $15 / MTok” Tier evidence: “Feature Claude Opus 4.7 Claude Sonnet 4.6 Claude Haiku 4.5 Description Our most capable generally available model for complex reasoning and agentic coding The best combination of speed and intelligence” SHA-256 29e2853e07f442a9… |
| Small models | DeepSeek V4 Flash DeepSeek | $0.14 | $0.28 | $0.18 | Archived April 29, 2026Official source · Internet Archive copy “deepseek-v4-flash (1) deepseek-v4-pro BASE URL (OpenAI Format) https://api.deepseek.com BASE URL (Anthropic Format) https://api.deepseek.com … mode only Non-thinking mode only PRICING 1M INPUT TOKENS (CACHE HIT) (2) $0.0028 $0.003625 (75% off (3) ) $0.0145 1M INPUT TOKENS (CACHE MISS) $0.14 $0.435 (75% off (3) ) $1.74 1M OUTPUT TOKENS $0.28” Tier evidence: “MODEL VERSION DeepSeek-V4-Flash DeepSeek-V4-Pro” DeepSeek sold exactly two general-purpose models; under the method the higher-priced is its frontier model and the lower-priced its small model. SHA-256 d4b98c13f1a31fe1… |
| Small models | Mistral Small 4 Mistral AI | $0.15 | $0.60 | $0.26 | Archived April 21, 2026Official source · Internet Archive copy “\"name\":\"Mistral Small 4\",\"icon\":\"94366f60-0cca-4dd1-9c11-c757c01b3a37\",\"description\":\"\u003cp\u003eA new standard for multimodal, … _dollar\":\"\u003cp\u003e$0.15\u003c/p\u003e\",\"price_euro\":\"\u003cp\u003e0.1275\u0026euro;\u003c/p\u003e\",\"locale\":\"en\"},{\"value\":\"Output (/M tokens)\",\"price_dollar\":\"\u003cp\u003e$0.6” Tier evidence: “\"name\":\"Mistral Small 4\",\"icon\":\"94366f60-0cca-4dd1-9c11-c757c01b3a37\",\"description\":\"\u003cp\u003eA new standard for multimodal, reasoning-optimized models.” Mistral Small 4 is the newest model in Mistral's Small line, its low-cost line. SHA-256 827320c525a6ab0f… |
| Small models | Grok 4.1 Fast xAI | $0.20 | $0.50 | $0.28 | Archived April 28, 2026Official source · Internet Archive copy “\"name\":\"grok-4-1-fast-reasoning\",\"version\":\"1.0\",\"inputModalities\":[1,2],\"outputModalities\":[1],\"promptTextTokenPrice\":\"$n2000\",\"promptImageTokenPrice\":\"$n2000\",\"promptTextTokenPriceLongContext\":\"$n4000\",\"cachedPromptTokenPrice\":\"$n500\",\"cachedPromptTokenPriceLongContext\":\"$n0\",\"completionTextTokenPrice\":\"$n5000” As published: input 2000, output 5000 (1/10,000 USD per 1M tokens, page data); converted to US dollars per million tokens (× 0.0001). Tier evidence: “\"name\":\"grok-4-1-fast-reasoning\"” Grok 4.1 Fast is xAI's lowest-priced current general model. xAI's docs page renders its price table from page data in units of 1/10,000 US dollar per million tokens (30000 is shown as $3.00; the August 2025 snapshot of the same page shows both). SHA-256 6a3d3e01c2d11e60… |
| Small models | GPT-5.4 nano OpenAI | $0.20 | $1.25 | $0.46 | Archived April 26, 2026Official source · Internet Archive copy “gpt-5.4-nano $0.20 $0.02 $1.25” Tier evidence: “choose a smaller variant like gpt-5.4-mini or gpt-5.4-nano” OpenAI names GPT-5.4 mini and GPT-5.4 nano as its smaller variants; the lower-priced (nano) is its small model. SHA-256 7eb1c91734c007cc… |
| Small models | Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite Preview Google | $0.25 | $1.50 | $0.56 | Archived April 30, 2026Official source · Internet Archive copy “Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite Preview gemini-3.1-flash-lite-preview Try it in Google AI Studio Our most cost-efficient model, optimized for high-vol … tive rate limits. Standard Free Tier Paid Tier, per 1M tokens in USD Input price Free of charge $0.25 (text / image / video) $0.50 (audio) Output price (including thinking tokens) Free of charge $1.50” Tier evidence: “Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite Preview gemini-3.1-flash-lite-preview Try it in Google AI Studio Our most cost-efficient model, optimized for high-volume agentic tasks” Prompts up to the shortest context band (128K or 200K tokens). SHA-256 aea0a3d186c79a62… |
| Small models | Claude Haiku 4.5 Anthropic | $1.00 | $5.00 | $2.00 | Archived April 28, 2026Official source · Internet Archive copy “Claude Haiku 4.5 $1 / MTok $1.25 / MTok $2 / MTok $0.10 / MTok $5 / MTok” Tier evidence: “Feature Claude Opus 4.7 Claude Sonnet 4.6 Claude Haiku 4.5 Description Our most capable generally available model for complex reasoning and agentic coding The best combination of speed and intelligence The fastest model with near-frontier intelligence” SHA-256 29e2853e07f442a9… |
| Tier | Plan | Monthly | Source |
|---|
Use the data
- Index series (CSV) Every tier, every edition: median, index level, change, range.
- All prices (CSV) Every model and plan, with source URL, capture time and SHA-256.
- Latest edition (JSON) The current edition with evidence, for software.
- This edition (JSON) Frozen; never changes except for logged corrections.
Embed the index
Always shows the latest edition and links back here.
<iframe src="https://kingy.ai/ai-price-index/embed/" title="Kingy AI Price Index" width="100%" height="230" style="border:0" loading="lazy"></iframe>
Licence and citation
Data: CC BY 4.0. Credit “Kingy AI Price Index” with a link to kingy.ai/ai-price-index. To cite one edition, use its permanent URL, for example https://kingy.ai/ai-price-index/2026-05/.
Found an error? Report it. Corrections are logged with the original value kept.
Method
How the index works Method v1.0
Kingy AI Price Index — methodology v1.0
Adopted October 19, 2026, for the October 2026 launch edition. It replaces the KAPI research beta at kingy.ai/kapi/ (release kapi-shadow-2026-08-24), which published dated price observations but withheld any official index.
What the index measures
The published list price, in US dollars, of:
- API tokens for each leading AI developer's current flagship, mid-range and small text models.
- Consumer subscriptions for each provider's standard paid plan and its top individual plan.
It measures what a buyer is charged at list price. It is not a quality ranking, a cost-per-task measure or a usage-weighted market average.
Editions and timing
- One edition per calendar month, identified
YYYY-MM. - From November 2026, prices are captured on the 1st of the month (UTC) and the edition is published within two days. The capture date is printed on every edition. A capture made later than the 3rd says so.
- The October 2026 launch edition was captured on October 19, 2026. Its comparison point is a reconstructed September 2026 baseline: the prices in effect on September 20, 2026, read from Internet Archive snapshots of the same official pages. The November 2026 edition therefore covers a 13-day interval and is labelled as a launch transition.
- A published edition is frozen. Between editions, a weekly check re-reads every source and lists verified changes under "Since this edition". Those interim changes enter the index only in the next edition.
Reconstructed history
Editions for January 2024 to August 2026 were reconstructed in October 2026 with this method, from Internet Archive snapshots of the providers' own pricing pages. Each uses the prices in effect at 00:00 UTC on the 1st of its month, read from the last snapshot taken at or before that moment and no more than 31 days earlier. Every price keeps its snapshot link, the SHA-256 of the archived bytes and a verbatim excerpt, and every tier assignment carries the provider's own words. Where the method needed interpreting for a past lineup (for example OpenAI's o-series reasoning models, which its pricing page listed apart from its flagship GPT models), the rule applied is written on the price.
- Subscriptions are not reconstructed, so the subscription tiers start in September 2026.
- A tier with fewer than three verified prices is not published for that month. No tier is published before April 2024, and the mid-range tier starts in June 2025.
- Moonshot AI's archived pages carry no prices, so it is absent before September 2026.
- Prices printed per 1,000 tokens or held in page data are converted to dollars per million tokens, and the published figures are shown beside them.
- The index base stays September 2026 = 100, so adding the history moved no published level.
- Reconstructed editions are labelled as such and are not indexed by search engines. Kingy did not publish an edition in those months.
Sources
Only the provider's own official pricing or model documentation counts. Resellers, aggregators and press coverage do not. For every observation Kingy keeps the URL, the capture time, the SHA-256 of the captured bytes and a verbatim excerpt that must contain the published numbers. If the excerpt check fails, the observation is withheld.
API basket
Providers (v1)
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Mistral AI and Alibaba Cloud (Qwen). A provider qualifies if it sells self-serve, pay-as-you-go API access to a general-purpose text model at a published USD price. Providers are added or removed only with notice one edition ahead.
Tiers
Each provider contributes at most one model per tier. A provider with no distinct model for a tier is absent from that tier; one model never fills two tiers.
| Tier | Rule |
|---|---|
| Frontier | The model the provider itself presents as its most capable or flagship general-purpose text model. If the provider makes no such statement, the newest model in its highest-priced general-purpose product line. |
| Mid | The provider's main model between its frontier and small models: the line it describes as balancing capability with speed or cost (for example Claude Sonnet, Gemini Flash, OpenAI's "balance intelligence and cost" model). |
| Small | The provider's lowest-cost general-purpose text model in its current generation, positioned for high-volume or latency-sensitive work. Edge and on-device models are excluded. |
Eligibility:
- The model must be purchasable by any paid self-serve customer at a published price. Paid previews count. Experimental, free-only, waitlist, limited-availability and enterprise-only models do not.
- Specialised models (coding-only, audio, image, video, embedding, search, "deep research" or premium-compute "Pro" variants) are excluded.
- A provider that sells exactly two general-purpose models has its higher-priced model in Frontier and its lower-priced model in Small.
- The provider's own words that justify each tier assignment are captured and shown next to the model. Where an archived date has no positioning page, the model in the same product line as the next edition's constituent takes the tier (for example Claude Haiku → Small), and the page says so.
When a provider launches a successor, the successor replaces its predecessor in the next edition if it meets the rule. This is deliberate: the index tracks what each lab's current lineup costs, not what an aging model costs.
Price measured
- Standard (on-demand) processing. Not batch, flex, priority, fast or regional-residency rates.
- Uncached input and output, per million tokens.
- The shortest-context price band when prices vary by prompt length.
- Time-of-day pricing: the peak (higher) rate.
- Tools, search, grounding and storage are excluded.
- A promotional or time-limited price counts if every paid customer is charged it on the capture date. The scheduled future price is recorded and shown.
Calculation
- Blended price per model = 0.75 × input price + 0.25 × output price (a 3:1 input-to-output token mix, the common industry convention). Input and output prices are also published separately so anyone can apply another mix.
- Tier value = the median blended price of the tier's constituents, equally weighted. With an even number of constituents it is the mean of the middle two.
- A tier is published only if at least three constituents have verified prices.
- Month-on-month change = tier value ÷ previous edition's tier value − 1, rounded to one decimal place.
- Like-for-like changes: for each model present in both editions, any change in its own input or output price is listed. These separate real price moves from basket changes caused by launches.
Subscription basket
- Providers (v1): OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, Perplexity and Mistral AI. Microsoft is left out because its plan pages do not reliably publish the price, and its plans bundle Office apps with Copilot.
- Standard plan: each provider's core individual paid plan, above any low-cost entry plan (for example ChatGPT Plus rather than ChatGPT Go, Google AI Pro rather than Google AI Plus).
- Top plan: each provider's highest-priced individual consumer plan. A provider with only one paid individual plan appears only under Standard.
- Price: US list price, monthly billing, USD, before tax, bought on the web (not in a mobile app store).
- Business, team and enterprise plans are excluded.
- Tier value = median monthly price. Same three-constituent minimum and change rules as the API basket.
Revisions and corrections
Published values are never silently changed. An error is corrected with a dated correction note that keeps the original value in the data. A methodology change gets a new version number; earlier editions keep the method they were published under.
Limitations
- Tokens are not words. Tokenisers differ between providers and model generations. Anthropic, for example, says its 4.7-and-later models produce about 30% more tokens for the same text. A lower price per token can still mean a higher price per task.
- Reasoning models can emit many more output tokens per answer. The 3:1 blend does not capture that.
- List price only. Discounts, committed-use contracts, batch, caching and free tiers are excluded.
- Equal weights. The index does not weight by usage or market share; Kingy has no reliable usage data across providers.
- Subscriptions are not usage-equivalent. Plans differ in limits and features. The subscription index tracks the list price people pay, not value per dollar.
Licence and citation
The data is published under CC BY 4.0. Cite as: Kingy AI Price Index, <Month YYYY> edition, Kingy AI, https://kingy.ai/ai-price-index/YYYY-MM/.
Left out of v1, and why
- Alibaba Cloud (Qwen). Model Studio prices vary by deployment region, thinking mode and context band on one page. v1 leaves Qwen out until a single comparable list price can be read reliably.
- Microsoft (Microsoft 365 Premium / Pro). Microsoft's plan pages do not reliably publish the price in the page itself (it appeared in one of four fetches on October 19, 2026), and its plans bundle Office apps with Copilot. Left out of v1 subscriptions until a stable official price source exists.
Editions and corrections
- October 2026 Captured October 19, 2026 · no corrections
- September 2026 Reconstructed baseline, prices of September 20, 2026 · no corrections
Reconstructed history (32 months)
- August 2026 Reconstructed, prices of August 1, 2026 · no corrections
- July 2026 Reconstructed, prices of July 1, 2026 · no corrections
- June 2026 Reconstructed, prices of June 1, 2026 · no corrections
- May 2026 Reconstructed, prices of May 1, 2026 · no corrections
- April 2026 Reconstructed, prices of April 1, 2026 · no corrections
- March 2026 Reconstructed, prices of March 1, 2026 · no corrections
- February 2026 Reconstructed, prices of February 1, 2026 · no corrections
- January 2026 Reconstructed, prices of January 1, 2026 · no corrections
- December 2025 Reconstructed, prices of December 1, 2025 · no corrections
- November 2025 Reconstructed, prices of November 1, 2025 · no corrections
- October 2025 Reconstructed, prices of October 1, 2025 · no corrections
- September 2025 Reconstructed, prices of September 1, 2025 · no corrections
- August 2025 Reconstructed, prices of August 1, 2025 · no corrections
- July 2025 Reconstructed, prices of July 1, 2025 · no corrections
- June 2025 Reconstructed, prices of June 1, 2025 · no corrections
- May 2025 Reconstructed, prices of May 1, 2025 · no corrections
- April 2025 Reconstructed, prices of April 1, 2025 · no corrections
- March 2025 Reconstructed, prices of March 1, 2025 · no corrections
- February 2025 Reconstructed, prices of February 1, 2025 · no corrections
- January 2025 Reconstructed, prices of January 1, 2025 · no corrections
- December 2024 Reconstructed, prices of December 1, 2024 · no corrections
- November 2024 Reconstructed, prices of November 1, 2024 · no corrections
- October 2024 Reconstructed, prices of October 1, 2024 · no corrections
- September 2024 Reconstructed, prices of September 1, 2024 · no corrections
- August 2024 Reconstructed, prices of August 1, 2024 · no corrections
- July 2024 Reconstructed, prices of July 1, 2024 · no corrections
- June 2024 Reconstructed, prices of June 1, 2024 · no corrections
- May 2024 Reconstructed, prices of May 1, 2024 · no corrections
- April 2024 Reconstructed, prices of April 1, 2024 · no corrections
- March 2024 Reconstructed, prices of March 1, 2024 · no corrections
- February 2024 Reconstructed, prices of February 1, 2024 · no corrections
- January 2024 Reconstructed, prices of January 1, 2024 · no corrections