Fugu Max vs Fugu Ultra
Side-by-side comparison of API pricing, specs, benchmarks, and capabilities
Fugu Max is 73.3% cheaper on blended cost ($3.00 vs $11.25/Mtok) — note: different model classes (mid tier vs flagship)
| Specification |
by Sakana AI
|
by Sakana AI
|
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Status | Current mid tier | Current flagship |
| Released | ||
| Pricing per million tokens | ||
| Input | $2.00/Mtok | $5.00/Mtok |
| Output | $6.00/Mtok | $30.00/Mtok |
| Blended avg | $3.00/Mtok | $11.25/Mtok |
| Cached input | $0.250/Mtok | $0.500/Mtok |
| Price basis | Sakana AI Token Plan (pay-as-you-go) list price, per 1M tokens, flat at any context length — the card states 'Fixed rates regardless of context length', unlike the context-tiered Fugu Ultra. web_search and web_fetch tool calls are billed separately at $0.007 per call and are not part of the per-token rate. The monthly subscription tiers (Standard $20, Pro $100, Max $200) bundle usage allowances rather than per-token rates and are not the list price. Sakana states the service is not offered to users in EU or EEA member states. | Sakana AI Token Plan (pay-as-you-go) list price, per 1M tokens. The published rate is CONTEXT-TIERED, not flat: the tracked $5.00 input, $30.00 output and $0.50 cached input apply at or below 272K context, and the vendor lists $10 input, $45 output and $1.00 cached above it — so a long-context request bills at 2x the tracked input rate and 1.5x the tracked output rate. The monthly subscription tiers (Standard $20, Pro $100, Max $200) bundle usage allowances rather than per-token rates and are not the list price. Sibling SKUs deliberately not tracked here: plain Fugu has no fixed rate of its own (it bills at the standard rate of whichever underlying model it routes to) and Fugu Cyber is contact-sales; Fugu Max is tracked separately as sakana-fugu-max. Sakana states the service is not offered to users in EU or EEA member states. |
| Specifications | ||
| Context window | 1M tokens | 1M tokens |
| Parameters | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Speed (TPS) | — | — |
| Modalities | ||
| Input |
textimage
|
textimage
|
| Providers | ||
| Available from |
Sakana AI — $2.00/$6.00/Mtok
|
Sakana AI — $5.00/$30.00/Mtok
|
Cost at scale
1M tokens · 50/50 input/output| Volume | Fugu Max | Fugu Ultra | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1M tokens | $3 | $11.25 | $8.25 (73.3%) |
| 10M tokens | $30 | $112.5 | $82.5 (73.3%) |
| 100M tokens | $300 | $1125 | $825 (73.3%) |
| 1000M tokens | $3000 | $11250 | $8250 (73.3%) |
When to pick which
distilled from the pricing and spec data above
Pick Fugu Max if…
- cost dominates: $3.00/Mtok blended vs $11.25 — 73.3% less on the same 50/50 token mix
Pick Fugu Ultra if…
- your workload re-reads context (agents, RAG, long chats): cached input costs $0.500/Mtok — 90% off its list input price
Summary
Fugu Max by Sakana AI costs $2.00/Mtok input and $6.00/Mtok output, with a 1M-token context window. It supports text, image input.
Fugu Ultra by Sakana AI costs $5.00/Mtok input and $30.00/Mtok output, with a 1M-token context window. It supports text, image input.
On a blended cost basis, Fugu Max is 73.3% cheaper than Fugu Ultra.
Note: Pricing is per million tokens. Actual costs vary with usage patterns, prompt caching, and batch discounts. Always verify against official provider pricing pages.
More comparisons
pairs sharing a model with this page
Fugu Ultra vs Gemini 3.1 Pro
60% price gap
Fugu Max vs Kimi K3
50% price gap
Fugu Ultra vs Claude Fable 5
44% price gap
Fugu Max vs GPT-5.6 Terra
33% price gap
Fugu Max vs Claude Sonnet 5
25% price gap
Fugu Ultra vs Claude Opus 5
11% price gap
Fugu Ultra vs GPT-5.5
GLM-4.7-Flash vs Ministral 3 3B
100% price gap