OpenAI and Anthropic API prices fell by up to 80% within months; the author of the analysis says the main cause is competition from open models
Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Published in SI: . Updated: .
Work of the same quality from SI is getting cheaper fast, which makes it more accessible to everyone who uses it.
An analysis by Max Woolf (minimaxir) lists the price changes: GPT-5.6 Luna got 80% cheaper from June to July, to $0.20/$1.20/$0.02 per million tokens (input/output/cache); a 50% cut was announced in September for GPT-6 Sol and Luna; Claude Sonnet 5 has cost $2/$10/$0.20 since June, and the total cost of using Claude Opus 5.5 fell by 40–60%, per the text. The author names three causes: models became interchangeable, open models and 29+ providers on OpenRouter hold prices down, and compute efficiency improved. He rejects the theory that the companies are underpricing ahead of an IPO; this is his assessment, not a statement by the companies.
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