Modelglass Pricing Index — 2026 Q3

Window: 2026-06-16 → 2026-09-14 (trailing 90 days) · Published 2026-09-15

Every AI model pricing dataset goes stale the moment it's published — this one doesn't try to be a snapshot. Modelglass tracks pricing, launches, retirements, and benchmark scores continuously across image, language, video, audio, and 3D-generation models; this report is a quarterly read of what actually moved, pulled directly from that live registry rather than assembled from vendor announcements after the fact.

This first edition uses a trailing-90-day window rather than a strict calendar-quarter comparison: Modelglass has been tracking this data continuously for only about three months, so a Q3-vs-Q2 comparison would either compare against a period before consistent tracking existed or silently exclude models added mid-quarter. Every figure below is honest about its own coverage on that basis — the 2026 Q4 edition will be the first genuine quarter-over-quarter comparison.

Every price figure carries a source URL and a verified-at date on the underlying registry entry — this report adds no unsourced numbers, and sources are cited inline per finding rather than only linked at the bottom.

Price changes

18 offerings across 4 of the 5 tracked modalities had a genuine price change in the window — the same offering repricing, not a new listing. 3D had zero: it's the youngest vertical, launched inside this same window, so nothing in it has a second price point yet.

Model Modality Change Δ Effective Source
OpenAI o3 LLM $10.00 → $2.00 /1M input tokens -80% 2026-08-29 platform.openai.com/docs/pricing
OpenAI o3 LLM $40.00 → $8.00 /1M output tokens -80% 2026-08-29 platform.openai.com/docs/pricing
Qwen 2.5 72B (Together AI) LLM $0.36 → $1.20 /1M input tokens +233% 2026-07-22 together.ai/models/qwen-2-5
Qwen 2.5 72B (Together AI) LLM $0.40 → $1.20 /1M output tokens +200% 2026-07-22 together.ai/models/qwen-2-5
Llama 4 Maverick (Together AI) LLM $0.15 → $0.27 /1M input tokens +80% 2026-07-22 together.ai/models/llama-4-maverick
Llama 4 Maverick (Together AI) LLM $0.60 → $0.85 /1M output tokens +42% 2026-07-22 together.ai/models/llama-4-maverick
Llama 4 Scout (Together AI) LLM $0.10 → $0.18 /1M input tokens +80% 2026-07-22 together.ai/models/llama-4-scout
Llama 4 Scout (Together AI) LLM $0.30 → $0.59 /1M output tokens +97% 2026-07-22 together.ai/models/llama-4-scout
GPT-Audio 1.5 Audio $32.00 → $64.00 /1M output tokens +100% 2026-07-13 developers.openai.com
Cohere Command R+ LLM $2.50 → $3.00 /1M input tokens +20% 2026-06-16 cohere.com/pricing
Cohere Command R+ LLM $10.00 → $15.00 /1M output tokens +50% 2026-06-16 cohere.com/pricing
ElevenLabs Flash v2.5 Audio $60 → $50 /1M chars -17% 2026-07-30 elevenlabs.io/pricing/api
ElevenLabs Multilingual v2 Audio $120 → $100 /1M chars -17% 2026-07-30 elevenlabs.io/pricing/api
Azure Neural TTS Audio $16 → $15 /1M chars -6% 2026-08-31 azure.microsoft.com/pricing
MiMo-V2.5-Pro LLM $0.435 → $0.411 /1M input tokens -6% 2026-08-25 mimo.mi.com
MiMo-V2.5-Pro LLM $0.870 → $0.822 /1M output tokens -6% 2026-08-25 mimo.mi.com

The biggest single move this window is OpenAI cutting o3 80% on both directions ($10/$40 → $2/$8 per 1M tokens) — a frontier reasoning model repricing into a materially cheaper tier. The two Together AI open-weight rehosts (Qwen 2.5 72B, Llama 4 Maverick/Scout) all moved the other way, up 80–233% — a reminder that "open-weights" doesn't mean "price-stable" when the number that moves is the hosting price, not a licensing fee.

New listings this window

63 distinct offerings were priced for the first time in the 90-day window, across all 5 modalities — roughly 2 new offerings added every 3 days. Highlights by modality:

Currently retired or deprecated

14 offerings across the tracked registries are marked retired or deprecated as of 2026-09-14. This is a census, not a "retired in this window" count — status is a point-in-time field, not a dated event.

Model Modality Status
Imagen 4 Image retired
DALL·E 3 Image deprecated
GPT Image 1 Image deprecated
DeepSeek R1 LLM retired
DeepSeek V3 LLM retired
K-EXAONE-236B-A23B LLM retired
Grok 3 LLM retired
Mochi 1 Video deprecated
Gemini Omni Flash Video deprecated
Veo 2 Video deprecated
Veo 3 Video deprecated
Gen-3 Alpha Video retired
PlayHT 2.0 Audio retired
Stable Audio 2.0 Audio deprecated

Quality-adjusted cost: coding vertical

Raw $/token doesn't tell you which model is actually the best value — a cheap model that fails half the time isn't cheap. Joining LLM pricing against the coding vertical's SWE-bench Verified scores gives a cost-per-benchmark-point view: blended $/1M tokens (average of input and output) divided by SWE-bench Verified score. 28 models had both a live price and a score this window — cheapest cost-per-point (best value) shown below, trimmed to the notable rows.

Model SWE-bench Verified $/1M in $/1M out Blended $/1M $ per benchmark point
DeepSeek V3.2 73.1% $0.28 $0.42 $0.35 $0.0048
MiniMax M3 80.5% $0.30 $1.20 $0.75 $0.0093
Mistral Large 3 41.4% $0.50 $1.50 $1.00 $0.0242
Kimi K2.5 70.0% $0.60 $3.00 $1.80 $0.0257
Gemini 2.5 Flash 54.0% $0.30 $2.50 $1.40 $0.0259
GPT-5.6 Luna 93.0% $1.00 $6.00 $3.50 $0.0376
Claude Sonnet 5 85.2% $2.00 $10.00 $6.00 $0.0704
Kimi K3 93.4% $3.00 $15.00 $9.00 $0.0964
Claude Sonnet 4.6 79.6% $3.00 $15.00 $9.00 $0.1131

DeepSeek V3.2 is roughly 15x cheaper per benchmark point than Claude Sonnet 4.6, despite scoring within 7 points of it (73.1% vs 79.6%) — the kind of non-obvious finding this index exists to surface. Only the coding vertical is built out in this first edition, as the methodology proof; science, agentic, and GDPval use the same join pattern against their own benchmark scores and are the natural next additions.

Methodology and sourcing

All figures were pulled live from Modelglass's own registry artifacts — covering image, LLM, video, audio, and 3D pricing — rebuilt fresh from the committed registry and ontology source on 2026-09-14, not read from a stale copy. Every price carries a source.url and verified_at pair on the underlying registry entry; two entries with a recorded prior price of exactly $0 were excluded from the price-changes table as likely data artifacts from initial entry rather than confirmed free-to-paid transitions, pending a data-side recheck.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Modelglass Pricing Index?
A quarterly report on real, sourced AI model pricing — what changed, what launched, what retired, and a quality-adjusted cost-per-benchmark-point view — pulled fresh from Modelglass's own registry, not vendor press releases.
How is "cost per benchmark point" calculated?
Blended $/1M tokens (average of input and output price) divided by a model's score on an independent benchmark — SWE-bench Verified for the coding vertical in this edition. Lower is better value, not just cheaper.
Where does the pricing data come from?
Every figure carries a source URL and a verified-at date on the underlying registry entry (ADR-0007) — this report adds no unsourced numbers. Sources are cited inline per row, not just linked at the bottom.
When's the next edition?
Quarterly, ongoing. This first edition uses a trailing-90-day window rather than a calendar quarter, since consistent tracking has only existed for ~3 months; the 2026 Q4 edition will be the first genuine quarter-over-quarter comparison.

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