The 'top ten' ranking was based on a composite of several leader boards. Of course it is subjective and changes all the time
| Model | Input | Cached input / cache hit | Output | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 5 | $5.00 | $0.50 | $25.00 | Fast mode: $10 input / $50 output. Batch: $2.50 input / $12.50 output. platform.claude+1 |
| Claude Fable 5 | $10.00 | $1.00* | $50.00 | Anthropic states a 90% discount for prompt-cache hits; cache-write prices were not surfaced in the retrieved Fable-specific page. platform.claude+1 |
| GPT-5.6 Sol | $5.00 | $0.50 | $30.00 | Cache write: $6.25/MTok. developers.openai |
| GPT-5.6 Terra | $2.50 | $0.25 | $15.00 | Cache write: $3.125/MTok, inferred from OpenAI’s stated 125% of input rate; confirm in your dashboard before large commitments. developers.openai |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | $1.00 | $0.10 | $6.00 | Cache write: $1.25/MTok, inferred from the same published schedule. “Max effort” changes reasoning budget, not the base input/output price tier. developers.openai+1 |
| Grok 4.6 | $2.00 | $0.50 | $6.00 | Standard rate for prompts below 200K tokens; long-context pricing may increase to $4 input / $1 cached / $12 output per MTok. I could not retrieve xAI’s own pricing page directly, so this is vendor-attributed secondary reporting. mem0+1 |
| Kimi K3 | $3.00 | $0.30 | $15.00 | Moonshot/Kimi’s official pricing page presents $0.30, $3.00, and $15.00 per MTok; these correspond to cache hit, input, and output. platform.kimi+1 |
| Tencent Hunyuan 3 (Hy3) | $0.132 promo | Not separately surfaced | $1.40 promo | Tencent TokenHub’s official promotion page shows approximately $0.132 input and $1.40 output per MTok; this is a promotional rate, so treat it as subject to change. tencentcloud+1 |
Conclusion
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First thing I noticed is that Grok is finally breaking into the top models. It had been dragging behind. Claude Sonnet fell off my top 10 list.
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All these models are closed source. Can't run them locally even if you did have a couple of H200s in your lab.
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The two Chinese models, Kimi K3 and Tencent Hy3 are much cheaper than Claude, and some GPT models. However, GPT Luna and Grok 4.6 are close. Claude is pretty expensive.
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It is important to learn how to use prompt caching effectively to reduce token count. more about hat
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I did the research on the model ranking myself. Then I used Perplexity to fetch the cost data and used Claude Sonnet to format the table. Image generated using Gemini Pro.