Language Model News

2026/10/13

  1. How much does speech-to-text cost per hour? Comparing the xAI and Mistral APIs
    PricexAIMistral
  2. Mistral Large 4 costs $1.36 in and $4.18 out, at half price for two weeks after launch
    PriceMistral
  3. Claude Managed Agents' web_fetch now fetches only URLs that already appear in the session
    How to UseAnthropic
  4. xAI's speech-to-text API costs $0.10 an hour in batch, and moved to 2.0 on 2 October
    PricexAI
  5. Claude Max and Team plans now include monthly API credits ($100 on Max 5x)
    PriceAnthropic
  6. GPT-6.1 Sol charges less than GPT-6 Sol for cached input
    ModelOpenAI
  7. Claude Sonnet 5.5 keeps Sonnet 5's price, and its cache reads were halved on 7 October
    ModelAnthropic
  8. Claude Haiku 5.5 is priced like GPT-6 Luna up to 100K tokens, and five times higher beyond
    PriceAnthropicOpenAI

2026/09/29

  1. Gemini 2.5 models are now limited to users who have used them before
    ModelGoogle
  2. Grok 4.7 joins xAI's model list at the same price and context as Grok 4.6
    ModelxAI
  3. Gemini 3.8 Live pricing: audio in at $0.005 a minute and audio out at $0.018
    PriceGoogle

2026/09/28

  1. Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS and Flash-Lite TTS prices double on 1 January 2027
    PriceGoogle
  2. Claude Opus 5.5 is $4 in and $20 out, and the model Anthropic now recommends first
    ModelAnthropic
  3. GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna: Luna costs a twentieth of Sol
    ModelOpenAI

2026/09/15

  1. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash takes over from V4 Flash at a lower price
    ModelDeepSeek
  2. Sakana AI's Fugu Ultra v2 and Fugu Max answer by routing work to other models
    ModelSakana AIOpenAI
  3. Cognition's SWE-2 is a coding model built on Kimi K3
    ModelCognitionMoonshot
  4. Inception's Mercury 2.5, a diffusion model at $0.75 per million output tokens
    PriceInceptionOpenAIAnthropic
  5. GPT-Live 1 bills by the minute, at $0.05, with the reasoning model on top
    PriceOpenAI

2026/09/08

  1. Meta sells the same model at two prices, and the cheap one is paid for with your prompts
    PriceMeta
  2. Grok 4.6 is the flagship, and it holds half the context of Grok 4.3
    ModelxAI
  3. Kimi K3 holds a million tokens at one flat rate
    ModelMoonshot
  4. The same Qwen model costs less from Beijing than from Singapore
    PriceAlibaba
  5. On Mistral, Large costs a third of Medium
    PriceMistral
  6. GPT-6 Astra and the three models that make up GPT-6
    ModelOpenAI
  7. GPT-6 Astra prices, and the 272K line that reprices the whole request
    PriceOpenAIAnthropic
  8. Claude Fable 5.1 takes the top of the lineup, and Fable 5 moves to legacy
    ModelAnthropic
  9. Cache reads on Fable 5.1 are a quarter of what they cost on Fable 5
    CostAnthropic

2026/09/02

  1. The current Claude lineup: 1M context, 128K output, retirement more than a year out
    ModelAnthropic
  2. SWE-bench Verified is at 97, and the top of the table is hard to read
    BenchmarkAnthropic
  3. A benchmark number means nothing without the conditions it was taken under
    BenchmarkAnthropicOpenAIGoogleDeepSeek
  4. Claude API prices, and the Sonnet 5 increase that did not happen
    PriceAnthropic
  5. OpenAI API prices: the GPT-5.6 line has long-context rates too
    PriceOpenAI
  6. Gemini API prices, and the two dates that change them
    PriceGoogle
  7. DeepSeek now charges double during peak hours
    PriceDeepSeek
  8. Perplexity Sonar ends on 27 September 2026, replaced by the Agent API
    PricePerplexity
  9. What prompt caching actually costs, and where the tenth does not hold
    CostOpenAIAnthropicGoogleDeepSeekxAIMetaMistralAlibabaMoonshotSakana AI
  10. Long context: who reprices the whole request, and who does not
    CostOpenAIAnthropicGooglexAIAlibabaMoonshotSakana AI
  11. Adding an MCP server to Claude Code, and which scope to pick
    How to UseAnthropic

Claude Max and Team plans now include monthly API credits ($100 on Max 5x)

PriceAnthropic

On 7 October 2026 Anthropic announced monthly API credits for Claude's Max and Team plans⁠[1,2]. They are meant for experimenting with tools, apps and agents that call the API, and they work with any model⁠[1].

Each month, Max 5x gets $100 and Max 20x gets $200⁠[1,3]. On Team, each Standard seat adds $20 and each Premium seat adds $100 to a single balance capped at $500 a month⁠[3].

Discounted Team plans for nonprofits and scientists receive the same amounts as regular Team plans⁠[3]. Free, Pro and Enterprise plans are not eligible⁠[3]. No payment method is needed on the Claude Platform to claim the credits⁠[3].

Credits can be claimed after seven days on an eligible plan⁠[3]. Linking one Claude Console organization in the billing settings on claude.ai sends the credits to that organization's balance every month⁠[3]. Users cannot change the linked organization themselves, so changing it means contacting support⁠[3].

The credits cover the Claude API (the Messages API and the Message Batches API), the Playground in the Console, Claude Managed Agents and the Claude Agent SDK on the Claude Platform⁠[3].

They do not cover interactive Claude Code or extra usage beyond plan limits, and Claude on Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud and Microsoft Foundry is excluded too⁠[3].

claude -p and the Agent SDK can also use the credits when run with an API key from the linked organization⁠[3]. When signed in with a Claude plan, or when started from the Claude Code GitHub Action, an IDE extension or the desktop app, they do not use the credits, even with -p⁠[3].

Credits arrive each billing cycle, and unused credits expire at the end of it⁠[3]. Even in an organization with purchased credits, the monthly credits are spent first⁠[3]. Everyone with an API key in the organization draws from the same balance⁠[3].

If the credits run out and the organization has no purchased credits or auto-reload, API requests stop until the next credits arrive⁠[3]. Usage is never charged to the Claude plan⁠[3].

Sources

  1. Anthropic - Introducing Claude Haiku 5.5
  2. Anthropic - Claude Platform release notes
  3. Claude Help Center - Monthly API credits for Max and Team plans