In short : Three years of LLM pricing data: flagship prices dropped, then flipped upward, while budget models bounced back. Tokenizer efficiency softened the headline, but real costs are rising.
Google’s AI triples in price each year.
OpenAI’s flagship model was seemingly subsidized for a while, before rising again.
Anthropic’s AI has been the same price for a little bit & decreased for the most powerful models.
Those are three very different pricing strategies. If we compare the absolutes, the data completes the picture.
| Vendor | Model | Input ($/1M) | Output ($/1M) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 3.1 Pro | $2.00 | $12.00 | |
| Anthropic | Claude Opus 4.7 | $5.00 | $25.00 |
| OpenAI | GPT-5.5 | $5.00 | $30.00 |
Google remains the low-cost player, increasing the price on all its models but still less than half of the competition. Anthropic had maintained a luxe pricing until late last year.
The pricing changes indicate changes in strategy : cuts when cash is plentiful & share matters. Increases when cash is tight & margins matter. The latter is the case for all three vendors now when capex spending continues to set records.