The pricing desk
Know the real cost of the AI you are about to buy.
An independent desk for current prices, ranked comparisons, and the jobs people are actually searching. We hide dated briefings instead of leaving last quarter’s advice on the homepage.
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What people are trying to price
Start with a real buying question
These are the cost decisions buyers keep bringing to this desk. Open the one that matches what you are about to pay for.
- 01chatgpt pricingprice a ChatGPT seat or API
- 02cheapest ai apicut inference cost
- 03claude vs chatgptpick a default general assistant
- 04cursor vs github copilotchoose a coding editor
- 05midjourney vs fireflyapproved design assets
- 06chatgpt plus vs claude procompare paid writing seats
- 07grok 4.6 cursorprice a new coding model
- 08microsoft 365 copilot vs chatgptsuite vs general assistant
Still worth opening
Updated recently
Fresh briefings
All public guides2026-08-20 · 11 min read
ChatGPT’s Lead Is Narrowing. Here’s How to Buy General AI Now
ChatGPT still has the brand. It no longer has a free pass. A mid-August 2026 traffic and enterprise-spend shift is a buying problem, not a culture-war story.
2026-08-20 · 11 min read
OpenAI Paused Some Frontier Training. Buyers Should Not Panic — or Ignore It
Reporting dated 19–20 August 2026 says OpenAI paused some frontier reinforcement-learning training to tighten safety and monitoring. That is an operations signal for anyone running agents, not a reason to rip out ChatGPT overnight.
2026-08-20 · 10 min read
Cursor Is Part of SpaceX Now. What Should Developers Actually Change?
SpaceX closed its Cursor acquisition on 14 August 2026. That is a vendor-risk and workflow story, not a reason to rip out an editor that already pays for itself.
2026-08-20 · 10 min read
Grok 4.6 in Cursor: Price the Accepted Change, Not the Launch Week
Grok 4.6 landed in Cursor on 12 August 2026 with vendor-published API rates and a launch-week usage bump. The buying test is whether long-running agent work survives review.
2026-08-20 · 10 min read
Cursor Origin vs GitHub: Do Not Buy Hosting Because of One Outage
Cursor began rolling Origin code hosting to paid users as GitHub had a multi-hour incident that also took Copilot with it. That coincidence is a prompt for a hosting question, not an answer.
2026-08-20 · 10 min read
Claude’s Writing Edge, After ChatGPT Stopped Looking Inevitable
Enterprise buyers have been telling researchers they prefer Claude in head-to-heads. For writing teams that is a quality story. It is only a cost story if you put the right work on Claude and the rest on a cheaper model.
Live comparisons
All public comparisons2026-08-17
ChatGPT Plus vs Cursor Pro: Which Is Worth $20/Month?
ChatGPT Plus and Cursor Pro both cost $20/month but serve completely different needs. Here's how to choose.
2026-08-17
Claude vs ChatGPT Cost: Current Tracker + Historical Model Context
A side-by-side cost analysis of Anthropic Claude and OpenAI ChatGPT for API and subscription users.
2026-08-17
AI Subscription vs API: Which Costs Less?
When does a $20/month ChatGPT or Claude subscription beat paying per token? The math is simpler than you think.
Reviewed with live model prices
GPT-4o vs GPT-4o mini: Is the Upgrade Worth It?
GPT-4o mini costs 97% less than GPT-4o. Here's when the performance gap actually matters.
Reviewed with live model prices
Claude API vs Cursor Pro for Coding: What's Cheaper?
Comparing Claude 3.5 Sonnet via API versus Cursor Pro subscription for professional software development.
Reviewed with live model prices
DeepSeek V3 vs GPT-4o: 20x Cheaper, Same Quality?
DeepSeek V3 delivers near-frontier quality at a fraction of GPT-4o's price. Here's what the real cost difference looks like.
How this desk stays honest
- 01Catalogue API prices are refreshed through the day. If a figure is more than two weeks old, we mark it stale instead of leaving it looking current.
- 02News briefings leave the public desk after three weeks. Evergreen money pages stay listed while the API catalogue is Live or Recent. We do not bump dates just to look current.
- 03The questions above are the buys people are actually weighing. New comparisons appear here while they are still current.