Frontier Model Comparison
A dated snapshot of the current top-tier, closed ("frontier") models, meaning the API-only models from the major labs that set the capability bar. Open-weight models (DeepSeek, Kimi, Qwen, Mistral, GLM) are in Open-Weight Models. For their hosted API prices, check OpenRouter. It's here for the at-a-glance shape of the field, not as a live price sheet: prices and versions move weekly, so use the leaderboards for current specs, speed, and prices. As of July 19, 2026. Prices are standard-tier API, USD per 1M tokens, short-context base rate (long-context tiers typically cost ~2×). Output speed (tok/s) is essentially never an official spec, so check Artificial Analysis for measured throughput. Update (July 21, 2026): Google shipped Gemini 3.6 Flash (reflected below) alongside Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (cheaper, faster) and a security-only 3.5 Flash Cyber; Gemini 3.5 Pro is still in partner testing and behind schedule, and Gemini 4 pre-training has begun.
| Model | Provider | Released | Context | Modalities (in) | Reasoning | In $/1M | Out $/1M |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-5.6 "Sol" (flagship) | OpenAI | Jul 2026 | 1M | text, image | Yes | $5.00 | $30.00 |
| GPT-5.6 "Terra" (balanced) | OpenAI | Jul 2026 | ~1M | text, image | Yes | $2.50 | $15.00 |
| GPT-5.6 "Luna" (fast) | OpenAI | Jul 2026 | ~1M | text, image | Yes | $1.00 | $6.00 |
| Claude Fable 5 (flagship) | Anthropic | 2026 | 1M | text, image | Yes | $10.00 | $50.00 |
| Claude Opus 4.8 | Anthropic | 2026 | 1M | text, image | Yes | $5.00 | $25.00 |
| Claude Sonnet 5 | Anthropic | 2026 | 1M | text, image | Yes | $2.00 ¹ | $10.00 ¹ |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | Anthropic | 2026 | 1M | text, image | Yes | $1.00 | $5.00 |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro (flagship) | Feb 2026 | ~1M | text, image, audio, video | Yes | ~$2.00 ² | ~$12.00 ² | |
| Gemini 3.6 Flash | Jul 2026 | ~1M | text, image, audio, video | Yes | ~$1.50 | ~$7.50 | |
| Grok 4.5 | xAI | 2026 | 500K | text, image | Yes | $2.00 | $6.00 |
| Command A Plus | Cohere | May 2026 | 128K | text | No | $2.50 | $10.00 |
| Amazon Nova 2 Pro | Amazon | 2026 | 1M | multimodal | n/a | ~$2.50 | ~$12.50 |
¹ Sonnet 5 price rises to $3 / $15 on Sept 1, 2026.
² Gemini 3.1 Pro is tiered by context length (≤200K shown). Verify on the Gemini pricing page.
Most flagships are now hybrid reasoning models (a toggleable "thinking" mode). Sources: OpenAI · Anthropic · Google · xAI.
Live sources (bookmark these instead of trusting the table for exact numbers): Artificial Analysis (intelligence + speed + price + latency), OpenRouter models (live per-provider pricing & real throughput), llm-stats.com (spec sheets with pricing baked in).