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GPT vs Claude vs Gemini -- API Pricing Compared
Published May 3, 2026 · Updated May 30, 2026
GPT vs Claude vs Gemini — API Pricing Compared
Choosing an AI model for your application involves balancing capability, latency, and cost. This article compares the API pricing for the major providers as of mid-2026.
Pricing Overview
All prices are per million tokens (input / output). Providers charge separately for what you send and what the model generates.
| Model | Input (per 1M) | Output (per 1M) | Context |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-5.5 | $5.00 | $30.00 | 1M+ |
| GPT-5.4 | $2.50 | $15.00 | 1M+ |
| GPT-5.4 mini | $0.75 | $4.50 | 1M+ |
| Claude Opus 4.8 | $5.00 | $25.00 | 1M |
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | $3.00 | $15.00 | 1M |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | $1.00 | $5.00 | 200K |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | $1.50 | $9.00 | 1M |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro | $2.00 | $12.00 | 1M |
| Llama 4 Maverick | varies | varies | 1M |
Prices are informational and subject to change. Always verify at the provider's official pricing page.
Budget Tier: Mini / Haiku / Hosted Llama
For high-volume workloads where cost is the primary constraint:
- GPT-5.4 mini — Lower-cost OpenAI option for simple chat, classification, and routing workloads.
- Claude Haiku 4.5 — Fast Anthropic option for summaries, extraction, and high-volume support flows.
- Llama 4 Maverick — Open-weights option; hosted API prices vary by provider and self-hosting shifts cost to infrastructure.
At 1,000 req/day with 1,000 input + 500 output tokens, monthly costs are roughly:
- GPT-5.4 mini: ~$90
- Claude Haiku 4.5: ~$105
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: ~$180
Workhorse Tier: GPT-5.4 / Sonnet / Gemini
These are the workhorse models for production applications:
- GPT-5.4 — Strong general-purpose model for agentic workflows and coding at lower cost than GPT-5.5.
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 — Production default for many coding, writing, and agent tasks with a large context window.
- Gemini 3.5 Flash — Fast long-context model with multimodal input and competitive pricing.
GPT-5.4 and Claude Sonnet 4.6 are priced similarly for output-heavy workloads; Gemini 3.5 Flash sits between budget and workhorse tiers.
Premium Tier: GPT-5.5 / Claude Opus
- GPT-5.5 — Premium OpenAI model for difficult coding, agentic, and professional work where quality matters more than cost.
- Claude Opus 4.8 — Anthropic's premium reasoning model. Use it when the task genuinely needs maximum capability.
Key Differences Beyond Price
Context window — Current GPT, Claude, and Gemini models increasingly support 1M-token class contexts, but practical latency and cost still rise with every extra token.
Output length limits — Maximum output per request varies. Check provider documentation for your specific use case.
Caching — Anthropic and Google offer prompt caching discounts for repeated context. OpenAI offers automatic caching for certain prompts. For applications with a large fixed system prompt, this can halve effective input costs.
Rate limits — Free tier and early-access tier rate limits differ significantly. Factor in rate limits if building for burst traffic.
How to Choose
- Start with a cheaper current model. Test GPT-5.4 mini, Claude Haiku 4.5, or a hosted Llama 4 option first.
- Long documents → Gemini 3.5 Flash, Claude Sonnet 4.6, or GPT-5.4. Large context helps, but only if retrieval cannot reduce the prompt.
- Structured output → Claude Haiku 4.5 or GPT-5.4 mini. Both are sensible starting points for JSON extraction, classification, and routing.
- Complex reasoning → GPT-5.4, GPT-5.5, or Claude Sonnet/Opus. Upgrade only after quality tests justify the cost.