AI API prices · 29 current models · checked Oct 23, 2026

Cheapest LLM API for every job

Short answerIt depends on the job, and right now it is a tie: Claude Haiku 5.5 and GPT-6 Luna tie for cheapest on all 8 of our jobs because their list prices are identical. Prices checked Oct 23, 2026; current models only; ranked by cost, not quality.

Job	Cheapest	Per 1,000	Runner-up
Chatbota 1,500-token prompt (system prompt plus the conversation so far) and a 400-token reply...	Claude Haiku 5.5 GPT-6 Lunatie: same price	$0.35	GPT-5.6 Luna $0.78
RAG (answer from your docs)6,000 tokens of retrieved passages plus the question, and a 500-token answer...	Claude Haiku 5.5 GPT-6 Lunatie: same price	$0.85	GPT-5.6 Luna $1.80
Coding agent40,000 tokens of repo context and history, 30,000 of them repeated from the last step and ...	Claude Haiku 5.5 GPT-6 Lunatie: same price	$2.30	GPT-5.6 Luna $5.00
Tool-using agent12,000 tokens of instructions, tool definitions and history, 10,000 of them repeated from ...	Claude Haiku 5.5 GPT-6 Lunatie: same price	$0.60	GPT-5.6 Luna $1.32
Vision (read an image)one image counted as 1,000 input tokens plus a 300-token question, and a 300-token answer....	Claude Haiku 5.5 GPT-6 Lunatie: same price	$0.28	GPT-5.6 Luna $0.62
Translationa 1,000-token passage in and about 1,100 tokens out (translations run a little longer than...	Claude Haiku 5.5 GPT-6 Lunatie: same price	$0.65	GPT-5.6 Luna $1.52
Batch extraction2,000 tokens per record in and 300 tokens of JSON out, through the batch API where there i...	Claude Haiku 5.5 GPT-6 Lunatie: same price	$0.17	GPT-5.6 Luna $0.38
Summarize long documentsa 20,000-token document in and an 800-token summary out...	Claude Haiku 5.5 GPT-6 Lunatie: same price	$2.40	GPT-5.6 Luna $4.96

Pick for me

Pick the job, how many requests a month, and a budget if you have one. It prices all 29 current models and gives 3 picks with the monthly cost and why. Ranked by cost for the job; we don't score quality.

JobRequests a monthBudget a month, $ (optional)

Pick 1 · cheapestClaude Haiku 5.5$10.50 a month

Cheapest current model that fits this job. $0.35 per 1,000 requests, standard price. Anthropic, 1M context.

Pick 2GPT-6 Luna$10.50 a month

Cheapest from a different provider, so you have a fallback when one has an outage. Same price as pick 1. $0.35 per 1,000 requests, standard price. OpenAI, 1.05M context.

Pick 3Gemini 3.8 Flash$78.75 a month

Cheapest from the pricier half of a provider's lineup, if you want a bigger model. $2.62 per 1,000 requests, standard price. Google, 1.05M context.

Fits = current on the provider's page (not deprecated, legacy or shut down), takes the input (images for vision, tool calling for agents) and its context window holds the request. Context and inputs from each provider's model pages, checked Oct 24, 2026; prices checked Oct 23, 2026. Cache writes not counted. Test quality on your own prompts. Cheapest model for every job

Each job is a fixed request size, written out on its page. Billed the cheapest way each price list allows (cache-read prices for repeated context, batch where the job can wait). Cache writes not counted.

Cheapest LLM API for every job

Pick for me

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