AI Model (LLM API) · decision tool
Claude vs Gemini — priced at your actual token volume
Claude's coding reputation vs Gemini's context window and price floor. Set your token volume; the bill and the verdict update live.
Prices verified 2026-07-13 against official pricing pages · fit weights are our estimates (see methodology) · share the URL to share your configuration
As of Jul 2026, with 50M input tokens/month, 10 millions output tokens / month, a $200 budget for this slot, Google Gemini 2.5 Pro ranks first for these inputs at 88% fit and a StackSays-estimated $162.50/month (Google Gemini 2.5 Flash: 81% fit, $40.00/month). Fit weights are our estimates; prices trace to official pages. Change any input below and the verdict recomputes.
Your situation
The verdict updates as you move these.
Clear pick for your inputs
Google's flagship with a 1M-token context window
vs Google Gemini 2.5 Flash: fit 88% against 81%, est $162.50 against $40.00 per month
Comparing 5 tools head-to-head. Open the full field (10 options) →
The decision, in plain words
For a solo builder at 50M input tokens/month and a $200.00/mo budget for the AI model slot, Google Gemini 2.5 Pro leads at 88% fit and $162.50/mo. The two rules doing the work: budget fit (~$162.5/mo is 81% of your $200/mo budget); capability tier (flagship — our estimate from vendor positioning, not a benchmark; budget models degrade first on long agentic chains).
The gap to Google Gemini 2.5 Flash (81% fit) is wide at these inputs — you'd need to change your requirements, not your taste, to flip it.
Generated from the calculation above — every number traces to the sourced data; nothing here is written by an AI making things up.
Why Google Gemini 2.5 Pro scores 88%
How the $162.50/mo estimate is calculated
What could change this verdict
Cost risk
Official prices verified 2026-07-13; calculation is deterministic code over those prices.
At a glance
| Tool | Free tier | Paid entry | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropic Claude Opus 4.8 | No free tier | Pay-as-you-go — Prompt caching available (cached reads $0.5/M) — not modeled here | 2026-07-13 |
| Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 | No free tier | Pay-as-you-go — Prompt caching available (cached reads $0.2/M) — not modeled here | 2026-07-13 |
| Anthropic Claude Haiku 4.5 | No free tier | Pay-as-you-go — Prompt caching available (cached reads $0.1/M) — not modeled here | 2026-07-13 |
| Google Gemini 2.5 Pro | No free tier | Pay-as-you-go — Prompt caching available (cached reads $0.125/M) — not modeled here | 2026-07-13 |
| Google Gemini 2.5 Flash | No free tier | Pay-as-you-go — Prompt caching available (cached reads $0.03/M) — not modeled here | 2026-07-13 |
Data sources
| Tool | Source | Verified |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic Claude Opus 4.8 | OpenRouter live pricing (CalcSays daily sync, fetched 2026-07-13) | 2026-07-13 |
| Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 | OpenRouter live pricing (CalcSays daily sync, fetched 2026-07-13) | 2026-07-13 |
| Anthropic Claude Haiku 4.5 | OpenRouter live pricing (CalcSays daily sync, fetched 2026-07-13) | 2026-07-13 |
| Google Gemini 2.5 Pro | OpenRouter live pricing (CalcSays daily sync, fetched 2026-07-13) | 2026-07-13 |
| Google Gemini 2.5 Flash | OpenRouter live pricing (CalcSays daily sync, fetched 2026-07-13) | 2026-07-13 |
A monitor re-checks these pages for changes; when a vendor moves a price, the date updates and every verdict recomputes.
People also ask
How much does the Claude API cost?
From live pricing (synced 2026-07-13): Claude Sonnet 5 runs $2 in / $10 out per million tokens, Haiku 4.5 $1/$5, Opus 4.8 $5/$25. A feature doing 50M input + 10M output tokens a month costs $200 on Sonnet 5 — the calculator above prices your exact volume.
What is the cheapest LLM API?
At publish time the floor among curated models is DeepSeek v4 Flash at $0.077/$0.154 per million tokens (open weights) — roughly 16–65× cheaper than flagship closed models. Whether it's cheap enough in QUALITY for your task is the real question; budget tiers degrade first on long agentic chains.