AI API prices in November 2026: rates and real costs

1. November prices, model by model#

APIs charge for input and output tokens. This selection covers 24 models using the November 4, 2026 rate snapshot, ordered by blended pricing: (3 × input + output) / 4. The two deprecated Mistral models appear last without a published current rate; their old prices are excluded from budgets.

The spread is still enormous. The cheapest output costs $0.20 per million (Ministral 3 · 14B) and the most expensive, $50 (GPT-6 Astra and Claude Fable 5.1): 250 times more. On input the range runs from $0.10 (Claude Haiku 5.5 and GPT-6 Luna) to $10: 100 times. Claude Haiku 5.5 and GPT-6 Luna tie at $0.10 / $0.50, and both have a context of at least one million tokens.

Three figures in the table come with conditions. Claude Haiku 5.5 shows the rate for prompts of up to 100,000 tokens. Gemini 4 Argon shows its rate valid through November 30. DeepSeek shows the peak-hours rate. The details are in section 4; the table only includes the standard price, without caching or batch discounts.

Documentation: OpenAI: API pricing ↗ · OpenAI: GPT-6.1 Sol ↗ · OpenAI: GPT-6 Luna ↗ · Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 5.5 ↗ · Anthropic: Claude Haiku 5.5 ↗ · Anthropic: Claude models and pricing ↗ · Google: Gemini API pricing ↗ · Google: Gemini 4 Argon ↗ · xAI: Grok 4.7 ↗ · DeepSeek: API pricing ↗ · Mistral: Mistral Large 3 ↗ · OpenAI · ficha del modelo ↗ · Mistral · Large 4 ↗ · Google · Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite ↗ · Google · precios estándar de Gemini ↗

2. What changed since September#

This review adds GPT-6.1 Terra, Mistral Large 4 and Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite to the table, retaining September and October changes as context. Mistral recommends Large 4 for Large 3 and Medium 3.5, deprecated since October 31; Flash-Lite is the announced destination for Gemini 2.5 Flash from December 1.

Claude Haiku 5.5 and GPT-6 Luna start at $0.10 input and $0.50 output per million, with different conditions. Sonnet 5.5, GPT-6.1 Sol and Gemini 4 Argon share a $2 / $10 base rate in this snapshot; task evaluation, thresholds and expiration dates determine actual cost. Anthropic still lists Sonnet 5 and Opus 5 as active.

AI API prices in September 2026: what every model costs

Documentation: Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 5.5 release ↗ · OpenAI: API changelog ↗ · xAI: release notes ↗

3. Worked example: a support bot for a month#

Suppose a support assistant that handles 100,000 conversations a month. Each conversation sends 1,500 input tokens (instructions, history and help articles) and receives 400 output tokens. That adds up to 150 million input tokens and 40 million output tokens. The calculation is direct: input tokens times the input rate, plus output tokens times the output rate.

PRICES = {  # USD per million tokens: (input, output)
    "Claude Fable 5.1": (10.00, 50.00),
    "Claude Opus 5.5": (4.00, 20.00),
    "Claude Sonnet 5.5": (2.00, 10.00),
    "Grok 4.7": (2.00, 6.00),
    "Mistral Small 4": (0.15, 0.60),
    "Claude Haiku 5.5": (0.10, 0.50),  # prompts up to 100,000 tokens
}

CONVERSATIONS = 100_000
INPUT, OUTPUT = 1_500, 400  # tokens per conversation

def monthly_cost(input_price: float, output_price: float) -> float:
    m_input = CONVERSATIONS * INPUT / 1_000_000
    m_output = CONVERSATIONS * OUTPUT / 1_000_000
    return m_input * input_price + m_output * output_price

for model, (input_price, output_price) in PRICES.items():
    print(f"{model}: {monthly_cost(input_price, output_price):,.2f}")

# Gemini 4 Argon changes rate on December 1, 2026
print("Argon through Nov 30:", f"{monthly_cost(2, 10):,.2f}")
print("Argon from Dec 1:", f"{monthly_cost(4, 20):,.2f}")

Output is only 21% of the tokens, yet it weighs 57% of the bill on Claude Fable 5.1, Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku 5.5, because on all of them it costs five times more than input. Grok 4.7, with a three-to-one ratio, brings it to 44%. Between the most expensive and the cheapest model in the example there is a factor of 100: from $3,500 to $35 a month.

The Gemini 4 Argon case shows why dates matter: at the current rate the example costs $700 a month; from December 1 it rises to $1,400. If you budget today for the full year, use the later rate, not the promotional one.

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4. Conditions and dates that change the list price#

The table shows standard prices and excludes caching and batch discounts. These conditions can move your bill more than switching models, and several have an end date, so note when you verified each one.

• Rates with an end date: Gemini 4 Argon costs $2 / $10 through November 30, 2026 and $4 / $20 from December 1; Gemini 3.8 Flash costs $0.75 / $3.75 through December 31 and double from January 1, 2027; OpenAI lists promotional pricing on GPT-5.6 Sol through November 30.
• Tiers by prompt size: Claude Haiku 5.5 charges $0.10 / $0.50 up to 100,000 tokens and $0.50 / $2.50 above; OpenAI models charge double input and 1.5 times output above 272,000 input tokens; Grok 4.7 moves to $4 / $12 above 200,000 tokens. The surcharge applies to the whole request.
• Batch and caching: OpenAI and Anthropic document a 50% discount for asynchronous requests through their batch API, and a cache read costs a fraction of standard input (10% on Claude Haiku 5.5 and 5% on Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Opus 5.5).
• Time of day: DeepSeek charges half outside its peak hours, 01:00 to 04:00 and 06:00 to 10:00 UTC Monday through Friday; on Chinese public holidays the whole day is off-peak.
• Lifecycle: Anthropic still classifies Haiku 4.5 as active; “not sooner than October 15” is an earliest date, not a confirmed retirement. Mistral Large 3 and Medium 3.5 have been deprecated since October 31, with Large 4 recommended; their documentation no longer publishes a current standard rate.

That is why it pays to store, next to each budget, the date you read the rate and the end date of any promotion. A budget built on today's prices can come up short in December.

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Documentation: OpenAI: batch and cached input ↗ · Anthropic: prompt caching and Batch API ↗ · Google: Gemini 4 Argon and Gemini 3.8 Flash rates ↗ · xAI: 200,000-token threshold on Grok 4.7 ↗ · DeepSeek: peak and off-peak rates ↗ · Anthropic: model retirements ↗

5. How to choose by task#

Price is a filter, not the final criterion. A cheap model that fails and forces retries can end up costing more per solved task. The sensible order is to describe the shape of your workload, shortlist by price and context, and decide with an evaluation on your own cases.

For the shortlist, Codifly's price ranking sorts models by cost and the cost-benefit ranking crosses them with performance. The AI cost calculator does the section 3 math with your volume and your input-to-output ratio, and the AI model comparator shows the limits and conditions of each listing.

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6. Keep your numbers current#

Promotions and retirements change a budget even when volume remains constant. Save the exact model, region and conditions with each estimate.

This table’s rates were checked against official pages on November 4, 2026. The open dataset is available as JSON and CSV under CC BY 4.0; review each row’s reviewed_at, sources and conditions. Models without a published current rate retain a missing value.

curl -s https://codifly.co/data/ai-models.json \
  | jq -r '.reviewed_at, (.models | map(select(.blended_usd_per_mtok != null)) | sort_by(.blended_usd_per_mtok) | .[:5][]
      | "\(.name)\t\(.input_usd_per_mtok)\t\(.output_usd_per_mtok)")'

• Automate a weekly query to the dataset and compare reviewed_at with the date of your last budget.
• Store billed tokens per model and per feature: without that you will not know which price change affects you.
• Before signing a usage commitment, open the provider's official page and confirm the rate and its end date.

Documentation: Codifly: open AI API price dataset (JSON) ↗ · Creative Commons: CC BY 4.0 license ↗