OpenAI frontier tokens: $30 → $0.50/M
OpenAI's frontier model price per million tokens dropped from $30 in Q1 2023 to $0.50 today; Anthropic went from $15 to $1, Google from $7 to $0.07.
Snapshot · God Mode Podcast
I Pay $200. I Use $12,500 in Tokens. AI Costs Crashed 850x and Subscriptions are Dead. | GMP EP03
Explore episode
Mar 9, 2026
Where this was said
850x Token Cost Crash: From $60 to 6 Cents Per Million Tokens
At 27:40 · chapter starts 26:15
The 850x Token Price Crash That Changes Everything
AI token costs have fallen 850 times since 2020. What cost $60 per million tokens with GPT-3 now costs 6 cents with open-source Llama 4. It's not just cheaper — the models are dramatically smarter. Every industry bottleneck unlocked by intelligence is now also being unlocked by near-zero cost.
Open-Source Models Are Getting Smart on Closed-Source's Tab
Open-source models are mostly distilled from the latest closed-source frontier models. So every improvement OpenAI or Anthropic makes also improves the open-source alternatives that compete with them. The companies funding frontier research are inadvertently subsidising their own open-source rivals.
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