πŸ’° AI Pricing & Cost

172 articles. Compare AI model pricing, optimize API costs, and find free tiers. Cost calculators and budget guides.

AI API pricing changes constantly, and the sticker price rarely tells the whole story once you factor in caching discounts, peak/off-peak rates, and how many tokens a model actually burns per task. This hub collects our pricing comparisons, budget-tier recommendations, and cost-optimization guides in one place, so you can figure out what a model will actually cost you before you commit. Pricing figures are sourced from each provider's own documentation and updated when providers change their rates β€” several articles below have already been corrected once a "permanent" price turned out not to be. If you're trying to control a growing API bill or pick the cheapest model that's still good enough for your use case, this is the right starting point.

Where to look

πŸ“Š Pricing Comparisons (55)

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs Gemini 3.8 Flash: Coding, Agents and API Cost

Compare DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and Gemini 3.8 Flash for coding and agents, including pricing structure,

Nex N2.5 Mini vs Pro: Pricing, Context and Agent Use

Compare Nex N2.5 Mini and Pro for coding agents, computer use, reasoning, tool calling, OpenRouter a

GPT-6 Astra vs GPT-5.6 Sol: Pricing, Tools and the Right OpenAI Model

Compare GPT-6 Astra and GPT-5.6 Sol on price, context, agent tools, reasoning and availability to ch

πŸ’Έ Budget & Cheap Options (44)

I Used MiMo Code for a Week β€” The Free CLI Agent With Persistent Memory

Week 18 of my AI tool series. MiMo Code is Xiaomi's free CLI agent with 82% SWE-bench and memory tha

How to Run FLUX Locally: Generate AI Images for Free on Your GPU (2026)

Step-by-step guide to running FLUX image generation locally. VRAM requirements, ComfyUI setup, speed

The $0 AI Coding Stack: Everything Free, Nothing Missing (2026)

A complete AI-powered development setup that costs nothing. Local models, free tiers, and open sourc

⚑ Cost Optimization (36)

AI Dev Weekly #24: Gemini 3.8 Flash Goes GA, Fable 5.1 Cuts Agent Cache Costs, Agent Plugins 1.0 Ships

Week of Aug 28-Sep 3: Gemini 3.8 Flash reaches production, Claude Fable 5.1 changes agent economics,

Claude Code API Rate Limit Fix: Managing Quotas and Costs (2026)

Fix Claude Code rate limit errors. Covers Anthropic API quotas, Max subscription limits, and cost op

What It Costs to Run an AI Coding Agent 24/7 (2026)

Real cost breakdown of running AI coding agents continuously. From $200/mo subscriptions to $23,760/

πŸ“– API Pricing Guides (37)

GPT-6 Astra Explained: API Pricing, Context, Computer Use & Availability

GPT-6 Astra has 1.05M context, 128K output, built-in agent tools and $10/$50 API pricing. Here is wh

Gemini 3.8 Flash Explained: Pricing, Context, Coding and API Changes

Gemini 3.8 Flash is Google's GA model for coding and agents. Compare its 1M context, 64K output, int

Claude Fable 5.1 Explained: Specs, Pricing, Context and Coding

Claude Fable 5.1 has a 1M context window, 128K output, adaptive thinking, and $10/$50 API pricing. H