The flagship price curve — and its turn
What OpenAI's best generally available model costs per million input tokens, 2021 → today. Every point traces to an archived pricing page, a provider announcement, or a dated community-file commit.
−97.9%
flagship input price, Nov 2021 → Aug 2025 ($60 → $1.25)
4×
reinflation since the Aug 2025 bottom ($1.25 → $5.00)
2.8 mo
median flagship reign since 2025 (9.4 mo before)
2,609
traceable price events across 533 models
Analysis
- The Great AI Price Collapse Is Overdraft — publish-gatedThe flagship $/MTok fell 97.9% over 44 months, then rose 4x in 8.5. The deflation era is over.
- The Shrinking Reign of the Flagshipdraft — publish-gatedMedian time at the top: 9.4 months before 2025, 2.8 months since. What that does to procurement.
- The Meter That Barely Moveddraft — publish-gatedInput prices collapsed 50x. Output prices - where reasoning models actually bill - barely fell 4x.
Current flagship
GPT-5.6 — on top since 2026-07-09 (1.6 months and counting). Median completed reign before 2025: 9.4 months; since: 2.8.