AI API Pricing Comparison 2026: OpenAI vs Anthropic vs Google vs DeepSeek

The AI API pricing landscape in 2026

Choosing an AI provider isn't just about capability — it's about cost-efficiency for your specific use case. A model that's 10% better at reasoning but 5x the price might not be worth it for a chatbot handling routine customer questions.

Here's how the major providers stack up on pricing as of early 2026.

OpenAI

OpenAI remains the most widely used API. Their tiered model lineup gives flexibility:

• GPT-4o — $2.50 input / $10.00 output per 1M tokens. Best all-rounder.
• GPT-4o-mini — $0.15 / $0.60 per 1M tokens. Best value for simple tasks.
• o1 — $15 / $60 per 1M tokens. Premium reasoning model.

Anthropic (Claude)

Anthropic's Claude models are popular for long-context tasks and coding:

• Claude 3.5 Sonnet — $3.00 / $15.00 per 1M tokens. Strong coder.
• Claude 3.5 Haiku — $0.80 / $4.00 per 1M tokens. Fast and affordable.
• Claude 3 Opus — $15.00 / $75.00 per 1M tokens. Highest capability.

Anthropic also offers prompt caching, which can reduce input costs by up to 90% for repeated prefixes.

Google (Gemini)

Google's Gemini models are competitively priced, especially for multimodal tasks:

• Gemini 2.0 Flash — Free tier available, paid at $0.10 / $0.40 per 1M tokens.
• Gemini 1.5 Pro — $1.25 / $5.00 per 1M tokens. Strong long-context model.

DeepSeek

DeepSeek has emerged as the budget leader for high-quality reasoning:

• DeepSeek V3 — $0.27 / $1.10 per 1M tokens. Exceptional value.
• DeepSeek R1 — $0.55 / $2.19 per 1M tokens. Competitive with o1 at a fraction of the price.

How to compare fairly

Raw price-per-token doesn't tell the whole story. Consider:

• Output quality — A cheaper model that needs retry loops may cost more in practice
• Latency — Groq and Fireworks offer ultra-fast inference, which matters for real-time apps
• Context window — Longer context means fewer chunking workarounds
• Rate limits — Higher tiers may have better throughput

Track costs across all providers in one place

Most teams use multiple providers. Comparing costs manually across dashboards is painful. A tool like MeterFox aggregates spend from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek, and 10+ other providers into a single dashboard, so you can make informed routing decisions based on actual cost data.