The LLM Price Index

One number for the cost of frontier intelligence — the blended price of a million tokens across today's flagship models, re-verified daily.

The LLM Price Index · as of Aug 15, 2026

$4.32/1M tok

blended price of a million tokens across 10 frontier flagships — one current flagship per major lab.

-5.5% since Feb 23, 2026 flat 11 days 3:1 in:out blend equal-weight 10 constituents

The index level has been unchanged for 11 days — it last moved Aug 4, 2026, and that move was a basket rebalance, not a reprice. A flat level is the finding, not a missed update: frontier list prices are structurally sticky and step only at a rebalance.

MODELPRICEWATCH.COM · 2026-08-15

The level over time

chain-linked · rescaled so today's point equals the headline

Index levelFeb 23, 2026 — Aug 15, 2026 · 54 readings

index level · $/1M blended basket rebalance

$4.57 · Feb 23, 2026 -5.5% across 54 readings $4.32 · Aug 15, 2026

Basket rebalance events: the date each flagship slot changed occupant or opened, which model succeeded which, and whether the index level stepped.
Date	Slot succession	Effect
Jul 18, 2026	GPT-5.5 → GPT-5.6 Sol; Grok 4 → Grok 4.5	rebalance
Jul 25, 2026	Claude Opus 4.8 → Claude Opus 5; Qwen3-Max → Qwen3.7-Max; + Moonshot slot opened (Kimi K3)	rebalance
Aug 1, 2026	+ Meta slot opened (Muse Spark 1.1)	composition
Aug 4, 2026	Qwen3.7-Max → Qwen3.8-Max	rebalance
Aug 6, 2026	Muse Spark 1.1 → Muse Spark 1.2	like-for-like
Aug 12, 2026	Grok 4.5 → Grok 4.6	like-for-like

The level steps only when a lab rebalances the basket to a differently-priced flagship — a rebalance. A like-for-like succession swaps in a lab's newer flagship at the same list price, so the level holds. A composition change adds a lab that previously had no slot: the chain-linked trend is unaffected by design (no phantom cliff), but the headline mean is now taken over a larger basket — a change in what is measured, not a market move.

The Intelligence Cost Curve

ceiling vs floor · log scale · GPQA Diamond (raw %)

The flagship index is the ceiling — what the frontier costs, and it barely moves. The floor is the cheapest model that still clears a fixed capability bar (GPQA Diamond ≥ 70, “GPT-4-class general reasoning”, anchored to GPT-4.1 (GPQA Diamond 70.0)). As cheaper capable models launch, the floor falls — the widening gap is the deflation story.

Ceiling vs floorMar 1, 2026 — Aug 15, 2026

38.2× cheaper

GPT‑4-class intelligence now costs $0.113/Mtok (DeepSeek V4 Flash) against the $4.32 flagship ceiling.

ceiling — flagship index, flat floor — cheapest GPT-4-class general reasoning model, falling

floor $1.93 · Mar 1, 2026 ceiling $4.32 · 10-flagship basket floor $0.113 · Aug 15, 2026

What stepped the floor down

o4-mini Mar 1, 2026: $1.93/Mtok
Grok 4.3 May 15, 2026: $1.56/Mtok
DeepSeek V4 Pro Jun 23, 2026: $0.544/Mtok
GPT-OSS 120B Jun 29, 2026: $0.262/Mtok
DeepSeek V4 Flash Jul 25, 2026: $0.113/Mtok

Floor uses a single absolute metric (GPQA Diamond (raw %), absolute 0–100), external only (self_reported excluded), deduped to base model (min blended across hosted SKUs), blended 3:1. Series begins Mar 1, 2026 — the first date a qualifying model had both a verified score and a price; earlier benchmark dates reconstructed from recorded sources are labelled as such. Full methodology → MODELPRICEWATCH.COM · 2026-08-15

What moved

latest refresh · Aug 15, 2026

No frontier flagship list-price moves since the last refresh — the basket held steady. That's the norm: frontier list prices are structurally sticky and step only at rebalances.

Cut three ways

sub-indices — each tells a different story

Cheapest frontier token

$0.544 /1M blended

DeepSeek V4 Pro — how little frontier-class capability can cost.

Cost per intelligence point

$0.062

Blended cost ÷ benchmark score, over the 7/10 constituents with a published score. Best value: DeepSeek V4 Pro.

Open vs closed spread

$4.38 vs $4.08

Closed-weights vs open-weights flagships — the premium for proprietary models.

What's in the index

fixed basket — changes only on a deliberate rebalance

The LLM Price Index basket: each constituent model with provider, blended price per million tokens, and weights openness.
Model	Provider	Blended* $/1M	Weights
GPT-5.6 Sol	OpenAI	$11.25	Closed
Claude Opus 5	Anthropic	$10.00	Closed
Gemini 3.1 Pro	Google	$4.50	Closed
Grok 4.6	xAI	$3.00	Closed
DeepSeek V4 Pro	DeepSeek	$0.544	Closed
Qwen3.8-Max	Alibaba	$3.00	Closed
Mistral Large 3	Mistral	$0.750	Closed
GLM-5.2	Z.AI	$2.15	Open
Kimi K3	Moonshot	$6.00	Open
Muse Spark 1.2	Meta	$2.00	Closed

* Blended $/1M = (3×input + output) ÷ 4. Methodology MODELPRICEWATCH.COM · 2026-08-15

Cite it

"Frontier intelligence costs $4.32 per million tokens — -5.5% since Feb 23, 2026, flat for 11 days."

The LLM Price Index — ModelPriceWatch, 2026-08-15 · modelpricewatch.com/price-index/

Citing a past date? Levels are restated onto the current basket when composition changes — the as-published archive keeps every dated headline frozen on its own basis. What we promise →

State of LLM Pricing — August 2026 →

The dated report: what the index, the capability floor, and the frontier spread showed on August 1.

How it's calculated →

Full methodology: constituents, weighting, the 3:1 blend, rebalancing.

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