Archive · 2026-07
July 2026,
frozen.
These figures were written once, at month close on 5 Aug 2026, and cannot be edited. Cite them freely: this page will read the same in a year. This is a restatement, filed as a new row that references the original.
Restated (Dispatch 116). Two page-specific definitions diverged from the engine's and reached this frozen month. (1) Benchmark saturation counted the sync's 0.000 'not measured on this instrument' sentinel as a real result — the engine refuses on it — which published the lcr spread as 75.667 across 126 models when the measured figures are 74.000 across 120. (2) 'Providers tracked' and the quality-per-dollar cheapest listing were priced off all host_prices rows including the OpenRouter aggregate pseudo-host, which is not a provider and carries the cheapest input price for 150 of 306 models; the market-structure section already excluded it. Both now use real endpoints only. Same window, same source rows, corrected figures. The superseded row is preserved, never edited.
Price moves
What changed in July 2026
Recorded from the append-only price ledger — every observed move, per model and per host, on both the input and output side.
- Decreases21
- Increases0
- New listings1134
- Total moves counts increases plus decreases only. New listings are shown here for context and are never folded into that total.
Top 5 increases
No increases recorded this month.
Top 5 decreases
Market structure
The same weights cost wildly different money
Identical model, different real provider. Aggregator listings are excluded, so every gap below is a genuine provider-to-provider spread you could act on today.
Providers per model, across 294 models with at least one real (non-aggregator) endpoint. Most weights are single-sourced; a small tail is served everywhere — and that tail is where the spread lives.
Quality per dollar
The cheapest model that still clears the band
For each task class we take the leading published score, subtract that evaluation's measured margin, and pick the cheapest model still above the line. Only suites with a real measured margin appear — a benchmark without one cannot back a claim.
Benchmark saturation
An evaluation stops being usable when the spread between models collapses into the measurement margin. We require the observed spread to exceed twice the margin; a ratio at or below 1.0 means the instrument can no longer tell models apart.
tau_banking · aa:tau_banking
spread 32.37 vs margin ±7.30 across 69 scored models — discriminating.
2.22×vs 1.0× floorlcr · aa:lcr
spread 74.00 vs margin ±9.79 across 120 scored models — discriminating.
3.78×vs 1.0× floorterminalbench_v2_1 · aa:terminalbench_v2_1
spread 85.77 vs margin ±10.39 across 69 scored models — discriminating.
4.13×vs 1.0× floorscicode · aa:scicode
spread 43.20 vs margin ±5.21 across 135 scored models — discriminating.
4.15×vs 1.0× floorgpqa · aa:gpqa
spread 59.00 vs margin ±5.94 across 135 scored models — discriminating.
4.96×vs 1.0× floorhle · aa:hle
spread 50.50 vs margin ±1.55 across 135 scored models — discriminating.
16.26×vs 1.0× floor
Embed
Put the live market on your own page
A self-contained frame that rotates the three sharpest numbers of the month: how many prices moved, the steepest rise and the steepest cut. It refreshes itself, needs no script on your site, and always credits CostMyAI.
<iframe src="https://costmyai.com/embed/intelligence-widget"
title="AI price market — via CostMyAI"
width="100%" height="200" loading="lazy"
style="border:0;max-width:520px"
referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin"></iframe>- RotationMonth-over-month move count, biggest rise, biggest cut.
- FreshnessServer-cached and refreshed every five minutes.
- SafetyIsolated iframe, no script in your page, nothing configurable.
- AttributionThe “via CostMyAI” link is part of the widget on every plan.
Notes
Why these numbers moved
Each note is labelled before its first sentence: a proven mechanism, a correlation we will not call a cause, or third-party data we have named.
Archive
Every closed month, frozen and permanently linkable
At 00:00 UTC on the first of each month we write that month's final figures once and never touch them again. A correction is filed as a new restatement row that points back at the original — the number you cited stays exactly as you cited it.
Method
How a switch gets measured
Price sync at freeze
The prices on this page are the catalog as it stood when this month was frozen. The engine itself keeps re-syncing from public provider feeds; the live page reflects that, this archive deliberately does not.
Independent benchmark scores
Quality comes from published third-party evaluations, per task class. We do not run our own private eval and we are never paid for placement.
The equivalence band
A candidate model only qualifies when its score sits inside the band around your current model for the task class in question. Cheaper-but-worse never clears.
Measurement margin
Every score carries its own uncertainty. We compute the real margin and require the gap to survive it before a switch is offered.
Latency ceilings
Median latency is part of the decision, not an afterthought. Set a ceiling and candidates that breach it are dropped before cost is even compared.
Refusals with reasons
When nothing clears, you get a stated reason — not a weaker suggestion. A quiet downgrade would cost you more than the saving is worth.