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LeaderboardEvery tracked model, ranked and priced side by sideBenchmarksWhat each test measures and who leads itPricesAPI, media, and hardware rates with a cost calculator

Plan

Stack plannerSix questions to a priced local and hosted stackShortlistOur picks for subscriptions, APIs, and hardwareEnterpriseSeat plans against self-hosting for a whole team

Build

HardwareGPUs and workstations, and which models they fitHostsWhere to rent open-weight inference, and for how muchHarnessesCoding agents and the models they drive

Lab

FindingsResults from our own evaluationsScanAudit a repo’s AI usage in the browserMethodWhere the numbers come from and how we check them
Data checked September 25, 2026
Data checked September 25, 2026
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T/TTokens or Towers

An independent guide to AI models, what they cost, and the hardware to run them. No account, no API key, no sponsors.

Compare

  • Leaderboard
  • Benchmarks
  • Prices

Plan

  • Stack planner
  • Shortlist
  • Enterprise

Build

  • Hardware
  • Hosts
  • Harnesses

Lab

  • Findings
  • Scan
  • Method
Data checked September 25, 2026 · Every number links to its sourceRSS · Source on GitHub

The shortlist

If you read one page, read this one.

A few picks in each category and one reason for each: the subscription, the API, the open model, and the box we would buy today. The leaderboard and price pages hold the whole field when you want to dig.

Open the planner →

Subscriptions

For an individual, a flat monthly plan usually beats buying the same traffic at API rates. Twenty dollars of plan buys far more inference than twenty dollars of tokens.

Claude Max 5x

Anthropic

The hundred dollar Max tier is the working default for daily agentic coding on Claude.

$100.00 / month

Anthropic plan pricing ↗

Claude Max 20x

Anthropic

Twenty times the Pro allowance for the weeks when the agents never sleep.

$200.00 / month

Anthropic plan pricing ↗

ChatGPT Pro 5xEditor's choice

OpenAI

Maximum Codex tasks that would cost thousands a month at API rates, and the top OpenAI tier still open to new subscribers.

$100.00 / month

ChatGPT plan pricing ↗

Kimi Code Ultra

Moonshot AI

The biggest Kimi Code quota, with open-weight K3 behind it keeping the exit door open.

$159.00 / month

Kimi Code plans ↗

Z.ai Max

Z.ai

GLM-5.3 at fourteen times Lite usage for well under the frontier plan prices.

$117.60 / month

Z.ai subscription plans ↗

Harnesses

The tool you live in matters as much as the model. These are the four we reach for.

Claude Code

Anthropic

The reference terminal agent for a Claude plan.

Included in every paid Claude plan (Pro $20/month, Max from $100/month, Team, Enterprise), or pay per token with Claude API, Bedrock, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Foundry credentials.

Product site ↗

Codex CLI

OpenAI

Open source, fast, and the natural pair for a ChatGPT plan.

Included with ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business, Edu, and Enterprise sign-in, or billed per token with an OpenAI API key.

Source repo ↗

VS Code

Microsoft

The default editor that almost everything else plugs into.

Editor is free; built-in chat works with your own provider keys or local models, or with a GitHub Copilot plan.

Source repo ↗

T3 CodeEditor's choice

ping.gg

One control surface over whichever provider agents you already run.

Free control surface; you pay for whichever provider CLIs you already run.

Source repo ↗

Hosted models

When you do pay per token, these six cover the field from cheap bulk work to the strongest thing money buys.

Claude Opus 5.5Editor's choice

escalation · hosted

The top of the independent index right now, at less than half the price of Claude Fable 5.1. Start here for work that has to be right.

$4.00 in / $20.00 out per 1M tokens

Claude API pricing ↗

GPT-6.1 Sol

generalist · hosted

OpenAI’s middle tier: about 90% of GPT-6 Astra’s index score at a fifth of the price.

$2.00 in / $10.00 out per 1M tokens

OpenAI API pricing ↗

GPT-6 Luna

generalist · hosted

The cheap multimodal generalist the planner keeps picking on its own, at ten cents per million input tokens. In our own evals its predecessor, GPT-5.6 Luna, matched GPT-5.6 Sol on the hardest question class.

$0.10 in / $0.50 out per 1M tokens

OpenAI API pricing ↗

Kimi K3

generalist · hosted

Open weights at frontier scale, so the hosted route never locks you in.

$3.00 in / $15.00 out per 1M tokens

Kimi API pricing ↗

GLM-5.3

generalist · hosted

The current GLM flagship, priced under the western frontier tiers.

$1.40 in / $4.40 out per 1M tokens

Z.ai model pricing ↗

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash

economy · hosted

The inexpensive default when agents and batch jobs burn tokens by the hundred million.

$0.30 in / $1.20 out per 1M tokens

DeepSeek API pricing ↗

Hosts

Hosts are where tokens leave the building. A speed specialist, a universal key, and the gateway we would build on.

Cerebras Inference

Cerebras

The speed play: open models served faster than anyone else runs them.

Positions on wafer-scale chips for very high tokens-per-second on supported models.

Pricing ↗

OpenRouter

OpenRouter

One key across nearly every backend that matters.

Pricing ↗

Vercel AI GatewayEditor's choice

Vercel

Pass-through pricing behind one gateway, living where the deploys already happen.

Pricing ↗

Hardware

Buy the smallest box that runs the local models you care about, and let capacity buy privacy at scale.

DGX Spark capacity applianceEditor's choice

DGX Spark

The capacity appliance the local half of this site is built around.

~$5,000.00

VideoCardz DGX Spark pricing report ↗

96 GB Blackwell workstation

RTX PRO 6000 class

Ninety-six gigabytes at consumer-flagship bandwidth for a serious local lab.

~$20,000.00

videocardprices.com RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell tracker ↗

32 GB performance workstation

RTX 5090 class

The fast local default when your models fit in 32 GB.

~$8,000.00

videocardprices.com RTX 5090 tracker ↗

Video

Video stays optional. One route for quality, one cheap enough to draft with all day.

Seedance 2.5

Hosted video

The quality pick per second among the hosted video routes.

$0.57 per second of 1080p

BytePlus ModelArk pricing ↗

MiniMax H3Editor's choice

Hosted video

Cheap enough per second to draft with, good enough to ship.

$0.08 per second of 1080p

MiniMax pay-as-you-go pricing ↗

Quick starts

Inspect a complete preset.

The subscription developerFor a single developer, a couple of two hundred dollar plans buy the best frontier-token value on the market today. Nobody runs a Kimi K3 at home; the machines that hold a 2.8T model cost more than years of subscriptions.View stack →Private local labFor the developer who wants local on purpose. A capacity-first one-person setup for local-only coding, vision, and documents.View stack →Enterprise: plans or on-premPer-developer math for a team decision. The three routes are the argument: metered cloud, the flat-plan route, and an on-prem tower running open models. Multiply by your seat count, and note that enterprise seat pricing usually lands between the plan and API lines.View stack →

Pick a machine, see what runs on it.

Match open models to a machine’s memory and bandwidth before you buy the tower. The hardware guide sizes every model in this list against every machine.

Open the hardware guide →