Pricing trends for AI / ML: 36 tracked pricing changes across 83 vendors. Direction: prices rising.

AI / ML Pricing Trends

Pricing direction: ↑ Prices rising

83
Vendors
8%
of All Tracked Changes
11
At-Risk Vendors
deprecated 10 reduced 9 restructured 5 model change 4 removed 4 new 1 increased 1 rebranded 1 restricted 1

Announced, not yet in effect

What this section prints is decided by the calendar, not by anything the vendor did. One record here carries a date after 2026-09-30. The vendor has announced it and it has not taken effect, so it is not part of the history below. On its own date a record here joins the Pricing Change Timeline, below.

Announced deprecated OpenAI effective 2026-10-23 medium
gpt-3.5-turbo, gpt-4, gpt-4-turbo, gpt-4.1-nano, gpt-4o-2024-05-13, gpt-image-1, o1, o1-pro, o3-mini and o4-mini shut down in the OpenAI API on October 23, 2026, with their fine-tuned versions. OpenAI names gpt-5.6-sol, gpt-5.6-terra, gpt-5.6-luna and gpt-image-2 as substitutes. Source ↗

Pricing Change Timeline

Every record we hold is listed here, newest first. A record is never removed from this list, so a vendor named here stays named here whatever its verdict does afterwards.

deprecated OpenAI effective 2026-09-28 low
gpt-3.5-turbo-instruct, babbage-002, davinci-002 and gpt-3.5-turbo-1106 shut down in the OpenAI API on September 28, 2026. OpenAI names gpt-5.6-terra as the replacement. Source ↗
deprecated OpenAI effective 2026-09-24 medium
Sora 2 video generation in the OpenAI API shut down on September 24, 2026: OpenAI removed the Videos API and the sora-2 and sora-2-pro models, and names no replacement. Source ↗
model change Ollama Cloud discovered 2026-09-22 · effective date unknown high
The free tier now includes usage credits instead of unlimited access to a single model. It also requires purchasing credits to unlock all models. Source ↗
reduced Othor AI discovered 2026-09-15 · effective date unknown high
The free plan now includes 2 data sources and 20 requests/day, down from 5 data sources and unlimited analytics. Source ↗
restructured DeepSeek API discovered 2026-09-03 · effective date unknown high
Pricing has significantly changed. The previous pricing of $0.28/$0.42/M tokens is no longer accurate. New models (deepseek-v4-flash, deepseek-v4-pro, deepseek-v4-flash-vision-exp) are available with different pricing tiers for peak and off-peak hours, and cache hits/misses. Source ↗
model change Vast.ai discovered 2026-09-02 · effective date unknown medium
The startup program now offers a credit *match* up to a set amount, dollar-for-dollar on verified compute spend, rather than a flat $2,500 in free credits. The program is for companies actively using the platform, not for evaluation. Source ↗
model change Anthropic API discovered 2026-09-02 · effective date unknown high
Anthropic API's own page now redirects to platform.claude.com, and the lineup behind it advanced. Claude Fable 5.1 is $10/$50 per MTok, Opus 5 is $5/$25, Sonnet 5 is $2/$10 and Haiku 4.5 is $1/$5. Anthropic also states that Sonnet 5's $2/$10 introductory pricing is now the standard price and the rise to $3/$15 scheduled for September 1, 2026 will not occur. Source ↗
model change LangSmith discovered 2026-09-01 · effective date unknown high
The free tier now includes pay-as-you-go pricing for traces beyond 5k/month, and introduces LCUs and LSUs for additional costs related to compute and storage. Source ↗
reduced Zenable discovered 2026-09-01 · effective date unknown medium
The free tier now includes 15 PR Reviews/Week and 100 Agentic Code Review Credits/Day, down from 25 PR reviews and 100 tool calls. Source ↗
restructured Mediaworkbench.ai discovered 2026-09-01 · effective date unknown high
The product at this domain changed. The previous state described 100,000 free words across Azure OpenAI, DeepSeek and Gemini; the page is now a social media scheduling tool and carries none of those terms. A free plan remains at $0/month. Source ↗
new Deepgram discovered 2026-08-28 · effective date unknown medium
The $200 free credit is still offered, but the details have expanded. Text-to-Speech's Flux TTS is free until September 12, 2026, and Voice Agent API's Flux TTS is also free until September 12, 2026. Source ↗
restructured OCR.Space discovered 2026-08-28 · effective date unknown low
The file size limit for the free tier is now 5MB, up from 1MB. Source ↗
deprecated OpenAI effective 2026-08-26 high
Assistants API deprecated, full shutdown August 26, 2026. Developers must migrate to Responses API + Conversations API Source ↗
deprecated MiniMax effective 2026-08-20 high
MiniMax closed its paid Music Generation and Lyrics Generation APIs to new users on 2026-08-20, and says its free music models (Music-3.0-free, Music-2.6-free, music-cover-free) will be discontinued, with no date given. M2.7 and Hailuo prices are unchanged. Source ↗
reduced Groq effective 2026-08-16 medium
Groq shut down Llama 3.1 8B and Llama 3.3 70B on its free and developer plans. On the free plan Llama 3.1 8B had allowed 14,400 requests and 500,000 tokens a day; the free chat models left (gpt-oss-120b, gpt-oss-20b and a Qwen 27B model) allow 1,000 requests and 200,000 tokens a day each. Source ↗
increased Composio effective 2026-08-15 medium
Composio's new pricing, for signups on or after 2026-08-15, raised the free plan from 20,000 tool calls a month (triggers counted inside them) to 100,000 tool calls and a separate 50,000 triggers a month, with 3 team members. Accounts from before 2026-08-15 keep the old plan through 2026-12-31. Source ↗
restructured Mistral AI effective 2026-08-14 high
Mistral's Free plan now includes $10 a month in API credits for Studio and the API, alongside limited messages, web searches and image generations in Vibe. Source ↗
reduced Roboflow effective 2026-07-30 high
Roboflow's free Public plan went from "$60/mo free credits" to "15 credits / month" between the Internet Archive's 2026-06-23 and 2026-07-30 captures of its pricing page. Roboflow states no dollar value for a credit; its Core plan sells 50 credits for $99 a month. Source ↗
reduced Cloudflare Workers AI effective 2026-07-28 high
On 2026-07-28 Cloudflare took Kimi K2.6, Kimi K2.7 Code and GLM-5.2 off the Workers Free plan; they now need the Workers Paid plan (or, from 2026-08-07, prepaid AI Gateway credits). Source ↗
reduced Exa effective 2026-07-24 high
Between 2026-07-17 and 2026-07-24, Exa replaced its free tier of up to 20,000 requests a month with $10 of credits a month, plus $20 of credits on sign-up. Source ↗
deprecated Google Gemini API effective 2026-06-01 high
Gemini 2.0 Flash and 2.0 Flash-Lite were shut down on 2026-06-01, as Google announced on 2026-02-18. Google names gemini-3.6-flash as the replacement for 2.0 Flash and gemini-3.1-flash-lite for 2.0 Flash-Lite. Source ↗
deprecated OpenAI effective 2026-05-12 high
dall-e-2 and dall-e-3 were removed from the OpenAI API on 2026-05-12. OpenAI names gpt-image-2, gpt-image-1 or gpt-image-1-mini as substitutes, and gpt-image-1 itself shuts down on 2026-10-23. Source ↗
deprecated OpenAI effective 2026-05-12 high
The Realtime API beta was removed on 2026-05-12; OpenAI's generally available Realtime API replaces it. Source ↗
restructured DeepSeek effective 2026-04-17 medium
DeepSeek V3.2 replaces V4 branding. Pricing dropped: chat model $0.30→$0.28/M input, $0.50→$0.42/M output. Reasoner model pricing unified with chat at $0.28/$0.42 (was $0.55/$2.19). Free token welcome package appears removed. Source ↗
removed Alibaba Cloud Qwen Code effective 2026-04-15 high
Qwen Code's free Qwen OAuth tier was discontinued on 2026-04-15, and new requests on it are rejected. Qwen's docs point users to Alibaba Cloud Coding Plan, OpenRouter, Fireworks AI or another provider. Source ↗
reduced Comet ML effective 2026-04-14 medium
Between 2026-03-23 and 2026-04-14, Comet cut the team members allowed on Opik Free Cloud from unlimited to 10. Source ↗
rebranded Keywords AI discovered 2026-04-13 · effective date unknown low
Rebranded to Respan, free tier preserved We hold no source for this record, so it does not set Keywords AI's rating.
restricted Google Gemini API effective 2026-04-01 medium
Billing-account-level spend caps enforced starting April 1, 2026. When a tier's spend cap is reached, API requests pause until the next billing month. Affects pay-as-you-go developers who may see unexpected request pausing. Source ↗
reduced xAI (Grok) effective 2026-03-19 medium
Between 2026-03-18 and 2026-03-19, xAI put Grok Imagine image and video generation behind a paywall for free Grok users. SuperGrok ($30/month) included it, and from 2026-03-25 SuperGrok Lite ($10/month) included basic images and videos. Source ↗
reduced Google Gemini effective 2025-12-06 high
Google cut the Gemini API free tier's rate limits on 2025-12-06. Gemini 2.5 Flash went from 10 requests a minute and 250 a day to 5 and 20, and Gemini 2.5 Pro went to no free requests. Google's rate-limits page stopped listing free-tier limits the same day. Source ↗
deprecated Neptune.ai effective 2025-12-03 high
Neptune shut down its hosted app and API on March 5, 2026, after agreeing to be acquired by OpenAI; new sign-ups and trials had closed on December 3, 2025. Source ↗
removed Together AI effective 2025-08-31 low
Together AI stopped giving new accounts $1 of free credit and began requiring a $5 credit purchase. Its notice is titled "August 2025 Changes to Free Tier and Billing"; the docs sentence offering the credit went between 2025-08-18 and 2025-08-31 (Internet Archive captures). Source ↗
deprecated Kluster AI effective 2025-07-24 low
kluster.ai shut down its inference, fine-tuning and dedicated deployment services on 2025-07-24, announced on 2025-07-17, which ended its free trial and $5 signup credits. Source ↗
removed xAI effective 2024-12-31 low
xAI's $25 a month of free API credits was a public beta offer that ran until the end of 2024. No xAI page has offered free API credits since; API usage is billed per token. Source ↗
removed OpenAI effective 2024-03-20 high
Between 2024-03-13 and 2024-03-20, OpenAI stopped giving new API accounts the $5 free trial credit, which could be used during an account's first 3 months. New accounts now have to buy prepaid credits, $5 minimum, to use any paid model. Source ↗

We hold 33 more records filed under this category that are not counted above: entries the vendor has since reversed, our own index housekeeping, and corrections to earlier entries of our own. Read the full change log.

At-Risk Vendors

All 11 of the 83 vendors we list in this category that carry one. A vendor is named here for as long as a demotion is in force against it: a one-off pricing event, recorded against a source we cite, whose date falls in the last 180 days — or a standing condition, also cited, such as a free tier withdrawn or a product retired, which does not expire with time. A demotion can lift with nothing about the vendor having changed, and that happens on the day the vendor's newest qualifying event passes 180 days.

Stable Picks

All 35 of the 83 vendors we list in this category that qualify, not a selection of them. A vendor is named here for as long as no demotion is in force against it and we hold no change record for it dated in the last 90 days — any record, including ones the timeline above does not count. A vendor can join this section on a day we recorded nothing about it, when the later of those two clocks runs out: 90 days after its newest record, or the day the demotion against it lapses. It leaves on the day we file a new record, or the day we can no longer vouch for the terms we list.

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