LLM Pareto Frontier — price vs intelligence, updated monthly
A model is Pareto-efficient if no other model is both cheaper and smarter. This report plots the current flagship LLMs — the open-weight models we serve and the closed models from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google — on output price versus the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, and computes the frontier from the data. Everything below the line is dominated: a strictly better deal exists.
Method: all numbers come from the same source on the same day — Artificial Analysis model pages (Intelligence Index, vendor list prices). Each edition is archived so you can watch the frontier move over time.
Current frontier (edition 2026-08)
Section titled “Current frontier (edition 2026-08)”Reading left to right: DeepSeek V4 Flash → GLM 5.2 → Sonnet 5 → Kimi K3 → Claude Opus 5.
Analysis
Section titled “Analysis”- Kimi K3 lands 4 index points off the top score (57 vs Claude Opus 5’s 61) — per Artificial Analysis, the narrowest open-vs-closed gap since the GLM-5 release in February — and it does it at $15/M output vs Opus 5’s $25.
- Claude Fable 5 fell off the frontier. At 60 it is dominated by its own stablemate Opus 5: one point smarter at half the output price. GPT-5.6 Sol (59, $30) arrives already dominated too.
- Below $10 per million output tokens, the frontier is entirely open-weight (DeepSeek V4 Flash, GLM 5.2) — and every open model on the frontier, K3 included, is in our pools.
- The V4-Flash-0731 retrain is this edition’s story: +10 index points (40 → 50) at unchanged prices moved DeepSeek V4 Flash into Gemini 3.5 Flash territory at 32× less per output token — and knocked MiniMax M3 off the frontier entirely (now dominated by a cheaper, smarter model).
- The near-vertical cliff at the top is gone: the last step used to be GLM 5.2 (51) → Fable 5 (60) at 11.4× the price; it is now Kimi K3 (57) → Opus 5 (61), 4 points for 1.7×.
- Sonnet 5’s quiet price cut ($15 → $10 output) keeps it on the frontier as the only non-open model besides Opus 5.
The data
Section titled “The data”| Model | AA Index | Input $/M | Output $/M | Weights | Pareto-efficient |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 5 | 61 | $5.00 | $25.00 | closed | ✓ |
| Claude Fable 5 | 60 | $10.00 | $50.00 | closed | dominated by Claude Opus 5 |
| GPT-5.6 Sol | 59 | $5.00 | $30.00 | closed | dominated by Claude Opus 5 |
| Kimi K3 | 57 | $3.00 | $15.00 | open | ✓ |
| Opus 4.8 | 56 | $5.00 | $25.00 | closed | dominated by Claude Opus 5 |
| GPT-5.5 | 55 | $5.00 | $30.00 | closed | dominated by Claude Opus 5 |
| Sonnet 5 | 53 | $2.00 | $10.00 | closed | ✓ |
| GLM 5.2 | 51 | $1.40 | $4.40 | open | ✓ |
| GPT-5.4 | 51 | $2.50 | $15.00 | closed | matched by GLM 5.2 at 3.4× less |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 50 | $0.14 | $0.28 | open | ✓ |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 50 | $1.50 | $9.00 | closed | matched by DeepSeek V4 Flash at 32.1× less |
| MiniMax M3 | 44 | $0.30 | $1.20 | open | dominated by DeepSeek V4 Flash |
| Kimi K2.6 | 44 | $0.95 | $4.00 | open | matched by MiniMax M3 at 3.3× less |
| Kimi K2.7 | 42 | $0.95 | $4.00 | open | dominated by DeepSeek V4 Flash |
How the frontier moves
Section titled “How the frontier moves”Each edition’s frontier is archived; this chart overlays them, current on top. Over time it shows the defining dynamic of this market: the frontier sliding down (cheaper) and right-side-up (smarter) — driven almost entirely by open-weight releases.
Caveats
Section titled “Caveats”The Intelligence Index is one composite — task-specific rankings differ. Kimi K2.6 sits off-frontier here yet holds the best open SWE-bench Verified score (80.2); for agentic coding the ranking flips — see the Which-LLM guide for tier-fair matchups. Prices are vendor list prices for the reasoning variants Artificial Analysis evaluates; open-weight prices vary by host. MiMo V2.5, which we also serve, has no index entry yet and is excluded rather than estimated. Index points aren’t linear in value.
Changelog
Section titled “Changelog”-
2026-08 (2026-08-01) — release-week update: the V4-Flash-0731 retrain lifts DeepSeek V4 Flash 40 → 50 at unchanged prices ($0.14/$0.28) — a 10-point single-model jump. It now matches Gemini 3.5 Flash at 32× lower output price and pushes MiniMax M3 off the frontier (dominated). Frontier: DeepSeek V4 Flash → GLM 5.2 → Sonnet 5 → Kimi K3 → Claude Opus 5.
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2026-07 refresh (2026-07-28) — release-week update: Kimi K3 (57, $3/$15), Claude Opus 5 (61, $5/$25) and GPT-5.6 Sol (59, $5/$30) added to the tracked set. K3 and Opus 5 enter the frontier; Fable 5 and Opus 4.8 leave it (both dominated by Opus 5). Sonnet 5’s output price dropped $15 → $10. The open-vs-closed gap is now 4 index points — the narrowest since GLM-5 (February).
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2026-07 (first edition) — baseline. Frontier: DeepSeek V4 Flash, MiniMax M3, GLM 5.2, Sonnet 5, Opus 4.8, Fable 5. Notable context at launch: GLM 5.2 (released mid-June) is the top-scoring open-weights model in index history; AA’s v4.1 recalibration lowered scores across the board vs the April v4.0 figures.
All four open-weight models on the frontier — Kimi K3 included — are served flat-rate in our pools — Flagship from $126.65/mo, Frontier from $48.45/mo, Core from $12.74/mo — where the marginal token costs zero during your reserved hours.