Frontier AI models: the top of each vendor's range and its cost

Prices from official vendor price lists · October 2026
41 flagship models — the best each vendor sells, and the most expensive. Output prices run from $0.6 to $180 per 1M tokens across the 37 models with a paid per-token price; 12 have a free tier and 17 ship open weights.
Frontier tier
Services found: 41
#AI modelCapabilitiesAPI $/1M (in / out)Context windowPrice / moOutput $/1MOverviewVisit site
41

Mistral Large 3

Mistral AI
Text & chatVisionReasoning
$0.5 / $1.5256K tokensAPI only1.5View

Browse by need

Reasoning models169 modelsCoding assistants17 modelsVision and images156 modelsLong context 1M+82 modelsFree tier available80 modelsOpen weights88 models

These 41 are the flagships - each vendor best available model, and the most expensive thing they sell. GPT-6 Astra, Claude Opus 5 and Claude Opus 4.8 sit at the top, with output from $0.60 to $50 per million tokens.

Frontier models earn their price where being wrong is costly and hard to detect: legal and financial analysis, architecture decisions, long agentic runs that compound their own errors. They are poor value for classification, routing or summarising short text. The disciplined pattern is a cheap model by default with escalation on confidence or complexity.

Best available, priciestThe ceiling of current capability, at the top of the price list.
Hard to detect errorsWorth paying where mistakes are subtle and expensive, not where they are obvious.
Escalation targetMost efficient as the second step, not the default.

Models with this capability

The 41 models below all support this capability. Prices are input and output per 1M tokens from the vendor official price list; for dirhams multiply by 3.6725. Tap a card to open the model page.

GPT-6 Astra
#1
OpenAI
in $10out $501.05M tokens
Claude Opus 5
#2
Anthropic
in $5out $251M tokens
Claude Opus 4.8
#3
Anthropic
in $5out $251M tokens
Qwen3.8 Max (0902)
#4
Alibaba (Qwen)
in $2out $61M tokens
DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813
#5
DeepSeek
in $1.0494out $3.14821.05M tokens
DeepSeek V4 Pro 0423
#6
DeepSeek
in $0.95526out $1.910521.05M tokens
Qwen3.7 Max
#7
Alibaba (Qwen)
in $2.5out $7.51M tokens
MiniMax M3
#8
MiniMax
in $0.3out $1.21.05M tokens

How to choose

  • Define what triggers escalation: confidence, task type, or user tier.
  • Compare on your own hardest cases — benchmark gaps rarely match production gaps.
  • Use caching and batch aggressively; they apply here too and the savings are largest.
  • Track cost per resolved task, not cost per call.

Common mistakes

Frontier by defaultThe most common way to multiply an AI budget with no measurable gain.
Ignoring the mid tierSonnet 5 and GPT-5.6 Terra close most of the gap for a fifth of the price.

Who this suits

Legal and financeWhere a missed clause or condition carries real cost.
Agentic systemsLong runs where early errors compound.
Research and strategySynthesis across conflicting material.

Related filters

Low latency73 small, fast models for volume
Reasoning169 models that think before answering
Proprietary API151 closed-weight, API-only models
Priority tier65 models with a paid fast lane
All 239 modelsThe full rating with filters and prices

Frequently asked questions

When is the frontier tier worth it?

Where being wrong is costly and hard to detect: legal and financial analysis, architecture decisions, long agentic runs.

When is it a waste?

Classification, routing and summarising short text. A small model does these identically for a fifth of the price.

What is the sensible pattern?

A cheap model by default, escalating to the frontier on low confidence or high complexity.

Is the frontier tier worth it for coding?

For large cross-file refactors, yes. For routine code a dedicated coding model is cheaper and close.

How often does the frontier change?

Every major vendor shipped a new generation in 2026. Expect annual movement.

Frequently searched

By capabilityReasoningCodingVisionLong context 1M+Free tierOpen weightsLow latencyRealtime voiceImage generation
By vendorAnthropic (13)OpenAI (30)Google DeepMind (17)xAI (8)Meta (6)DeepSeek (9)Mistral AI (11)Alibaba (Qwen) (34)Z.ai (12)Moonshot AI (5)
Popular modelsClaude Fable 5.1GPT-6 AstraClaude Opus 5Claude Fable 5GPT-5.6 SolGLM 5.3Grok 4.6Kimi K3GPT-5.6 Terra
By deliveryBatch APIPrompt cachingPriority tierFrontier tierProprietary APITool callingStructured JSONWeb searchMultilingual

Ratings 1

Avg. score 5

Rate this page

Help us improve