Which AI should you use?
Answer two questions and get one clear pick, where to use it and what it costs. Every company sells a smartest model, a balanced one and a cheap fast one; the right choice depends on the job, not the brand.
The full lineup
| Model | Tier | Best for | In $/1M | Out $/1M | Context |
|---|
Prices are API prices per 1 million tokens (about 750,000 English words). In the apps (claude.ai, ChatGPT, Gemini) you pay a monthly plan instead. * Open-weight models are free to download; you pay for the hardware or a host like OpenRouter.
What each model is actually good at
Published test scores, side by side. Each column is one skill; the brighter the cell, the higher that model ranks among the others on that test. Hover a score for details, click it for the source. "—" means the test hasn't been run on that model (text-only models, for example, can't take the image test).
Rank the models on one skill
Smarts vs price
Up = smarter overall (Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index). Left = cheaper (blended API price per 1M tokens, log scale). The top-left corner is the best value.
Words you'll see everywhere
- Token
- A chunk of text, roughly ¾ of an English word. API pricing counts tokens in and out.
- Context window
- How much the model can read at once. 1M tokens is several books or a whole codebase.
- Thinking / effort
- How long the model reasons before answering. More effort: better answers, slower, pricier.
- API
- Using a model from your own code, paying per use instead of a subscription.
- Open-weight
- A model you can download and run yourself. Your data never leaves your machine.
- Hallucination
- When a model confidently makes something up. Check facts, numbers and quotes.