AI Model Release Tracker

How this tracker stays honest

Every released model's per-token rate is read off the provider's own API pricing page, stored with that exact source URL, and dated to the day it was checked. A model reaches the upcoming table only when the provider has officially announced it or credible reporting has surfaced it, and that entry carries the reporting source. No release date is published unless a primary source states it, and no rumor appears without a citation. When a number cannot be confirmed against an official page, it is left off rather than guessed.

Released, preview, announced, rumored: what the labels mean

• Released: generally available, callable today, with a verified rate card.
• Preview: available to use but still rolling out or limited, so the rate may move.
• Announced: the provider has officially confirmed the model and, usually, a window, but it is not yet callable.
• Rumored: surfaced by credible reporting rather than the provider, with no confirmed date. Treated as a lead, attributed to its source, never as fact.

The sticker rate is not the bill

A low per-token price does not make a model cheap to run. What a coding task costs is set by how many tokens the agent burns reading context, reasoning, and generating output, and that swings by more than an order of magnitude between models and runs. A 2026 Microsoft Research preprint found the cheaper-listed model finished the same work at a higher cost in roughly a third of matchups, theprice reversal phenomenon. The honest unit is cost to finish a representative slice of your own tasks: thecost-per-task calculator models it for every row in this tracker, and the Claude Code cost breakdown walks the math end to end.

Frequently asked questions

What new AI models launched in 2026?

As of September 2026, the models tracked here include OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra (released September 3 at $10/$50 per Mtok, 2.5x the GPT-5.6 Sol rate it replaces, with a 2x surcharge on prompts over 272,000 tokens); Anthropic's Claude Fable 5.1 (released September 1 alongside the invitation-only Mythos 5.1, holding Fable 5's $10/$50 per Mtok and cutting only the cache read, from $1.00 to $0.25), Claude Opus 5 (released July 24), Sonnet 5 and Haiku 4.5, with Claude Opus 4.1 retired on the Claude API on August 5; OpenAI's GPT-5.5 and the GPT-5.6 family (Sol, Terra and Luna, generally available July 9, with Terra and Luna repriced July 30 and Sol taking its own promotional cut on August 21, held through at least November 21); xAI's Grok 4.6 (released August 12, 35 days after Grok 4.5); Meta's Muse Spark 1.1 and 1.2 plus Muse Glimmer (an Apache 2.0 open-weight model); Google's Gemini 3.7 Flash (released August 13 at an introductory rate that doubles on January 1, 2027), 3.6 Flash, 3.1 Pro, 3.5 Flash and 3 Flash; Thinking Machines' Inkling (released July 15, a 975B/41B-active MoE under Apache 2.0); and the leading China-built models DeepSeek V4 Pro and V4 Flash (both moving to peak and off-peak billing on August 16), Alibaba's Qwen3.7 Max, Qwen3.8-Max (released August 3, with open weights published August 13 under a custom licence rather than Apache 2.0) and the Qwen3.8-Max-0902 post-training snapshot (released September 2 at the same $2/$6 per Mtok), Moonshot's Kimi K3 (released July 16) and K2.7 Code, and Zhipu's GLM-5.2. Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 shipped June 9, 2026, was suspended June 12 under a US export-control directive, and returned in early July 2026 after the Commerce Department lifted the directive. Each row links to the provider's official page and is dated to when it was last verified.

What AI models are coming next?

As of September 2026 the tracker is watching one: Google's Gemini 3.5 Pro, which Google has announced and lists as "coming soon" with no date. The upcoming table emptied out this month. OpenAI's GPT-6, carried here as a rumor since June on an independent tracker alone, was released on September 3, 2026 as GPT-6 Astra and now sits in the released table at a verified $10 input and $50 output per million tokens. Anthropic's Claude Fable 5.1, carried as a rumor through August on community reports, was released on September 1. OpenAI's GPT-5.6 family, previously listed as expected, went generally available July 9. Each entry is attributed to its source. The tracker never publishes a release date a provider has not stated, and never lists a rumor without a citation.

How much do new AI models cost to use?

Per-token API rates span more than an order of magnitude, from GPT-5.6 Luna at $0.20 per million input tokens to Claude Fable 5, Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 Astra at $10. DeepSeek held the bottom of that range until 16:00 UTC on August 16, 2026, when it moved to peak and off-peak billing: V4 Flash input went from $0.14 flat to $0.22 off-peak and $0.44 at peak, so the rates shown here for both DeepSeek rows are the peak figures. But the sticker rate is not the bill: what a task actually costs is set by how many tokens an agent burns, and the cheapest per-token model is often not the cheapest to finish the work. GPT-6 Astra is the clearest case on this table. It costs 2.5 times GPT-5.6 Sol per token and matches Fable 5.1 exactly on the sticker, yet on the independent Terminal-Bench 4.0 board it finishes a task for $17.02 against the $32.69 Fable 5.1 costs, because it burns 1.53 billion tokens where Fable 5.1 burns 2.75 billion. Fable 5.1 makes the same point from the other direction: it matches Fable 5 on every headline rate and still costs about 21% less on a long agentic run, because the only number it changed was the cache read. Model any row in the cost-per-task calculator to see the real figure.

Where does this AI model data come from?

Every per-token rate is read off the provider's own official API pricing page, stored with that source URL, and stamped with the date it was checked. Release and announcement dates are recorded only when a primary source states them. Nothing here is taken from memory or an unsourced tracker.

Sources

Per-token rates for the released models are grounded to each provider's official API pricing page, verified September 2026:

Spotted a rate that has changed, or a model that is missing? Submit it or send a correction. Listings are free, editorial, and cannot be bought.

• Anthropic. (2026). Claude pricing (Fable 5, Opus 4.8, Sonnet 4.6, Haiku 4.5). claude.com/pricing
• OpenAI. (2026). API pricing (GPT-5.6). openai.com/api/pricing
• Google. (2026). Gemini Developer API pricing (Gemini 3.1 Pro, 3.5 Flash, 3 Flash). ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing
• DeepSeek. (2026). API pricing (DeepSeek V4 Pro and V4 Flash). api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing
• Alibaba Cloud. (2026). Model Studio model pricing (Qwen3.7 Max). alibabacloud.com/help/en/model-studio/models
• QwenCloud. (2026). Qwen3.8-Max-0902 model page and pricing (same $2/$6 rate as Qwen3.8-Max). qwencloud.com/models/qwen3.8-max-0902
• Moonshot AI. (2026). Kimi API pricing (Kimi K3 and K2.7 Code). platform.kimi.ai/docs/pricing
• Zhipu AI (via OpenRouter). (2026). GLM-5.2 API pricing (Z.ai's own rate card still rolling out). openrouter.ai/z-ai/glm-5.2