The right AI for your work is a matter of record.
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Today’s standings, asterisks included.
Independent numbers where they exist, vendor numbers labeled where they don’t. This table changes when the facts do.
| Model | Intelligence¹ | Output $/1M | The verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 5.5NEW | 58#1 | 20.00 | First by five points at $20 out, though the 40% saving over Opus 5 is measured at its lower default effort. |
| Claude Fable 5.1NEW | 53#2 | 50.00 | Tied second at 2.5x Opus 5.5's price; Anthropic still points here when Opus 5.5 at higher effort falls short. |
| GPT-6 AstraNEW | 53#2 | 50.00³ | Ties Fable 5.1 at 2.5x GPT-5.6 Sol's price, and OpenAI's own system card says its chain of thought is harder to monitor. |
| Claude Opus 5 | 51#4 | 25.00 | Still $25 out, still active, and Anthropic's own docs now say to migrate to Opus 5.5. |
| GPT-6 SolNEW | 48#5 | 10.00 | Half of GPT-5.6 Sol's promo price for one more point; AA calls it a pricing and reliability release more than an intelligence release. |
| Grok 4.7NEW | 46#6 | 6.00 | Lowest output price of anything in this table above Gemini 3.8 Flash, but AA's ~81K tokens per task makes a finished task cost more than GPT-6 Astra's. |
| Gemini 3.8 FlashNEW | 41#7 | 3.75² | Cheapest at its level per AA, and it spends more tokens per task by design; the sale ends December 31. |
| GPT-6 LunaNEW | 37#8 | 0.50 | Seven cents per AA index task and a 77% hallucination rate; fine for extraction, not for facts. |
¹ Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.3.2, measured independently, at each model’s highest scored effort (max for Claude and GPT-6, xhigh for Grok 4.7, high for Gemini 3.8 Flash); ranks are within this table. AA re-versioned the index in September 2026, so these scores are not comparable to our August table. ² Introductory rate through Dec 31, 2026; doubles to $7.50 on Jan 1, 2027. ³ Requests over 272K input tokens bill the whole request at $75 output.
Prices are list API rates per 1M output tokens. Dashes mean we won’t print a number we haven’t checked.
Field notes, filed under oath.
Every model launch, separated into what’s verified and what’s marketing. No press-release stenography.
OpenAI and Anthropic Shipped the Same Day. Sol Is Half the Price. Opus 5.5 Is the Better Model. Both Claims Have Asterisks.
On September 22, 2026, OpenAI released GPT-6 Sol ($2 in / $10 out) and GPT-6 Luna ($0.10 / $0.50), and Anthropic released Claude Opus 5.5 ($4 / $20) the same day.
→Nº 60 · SEP 24Jev Is Not an LLM, and Vercel Says Nearly 13% of Paid Teams Tried It in a Day. The 444x Is TypeSafe's Own Math.
TypeSafe AI came out of stealth on September 15 with $40 million from DCVC and Jev, a model that answers typed questions with probabilities and generates nothing.
→Nº 59 · SEP 24GPT-6 Astra Can Hide Its Reasoning. OpenAI Says So in Its Own System Card.
OpenAI previewed GPT-6 Astra on September 3, 2026 and opened it to paid tiers from September 4, at $10 in / $50 out per million tokens, 2.5 times GPT-5.6 Sol.
→Nº 58 · SEP 24Grok 4.7 Took Five Delays to Land in 21st Place. It Is Not in the Grok App Yet.
xAI, now SpaceXAI, shipped Grok 4.7 on Monday, September 21, 2026, after a summer of slipping dates on Elon Musk's feed.
→Written by T.W. Ghost · corrections welcome, receipts required
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