US vs. China · tracked daily
US vs. China: real AI model pricing
Based on real per-token pricing, the median output-token price among tracked US flagship models is $5.13/1M, versus $1.01/1M for tracked Chinese flagship models - roughly 5.1x higher for US models. One flagship model per lab, picked by real Artificial Analysis quality score, not curated by hand.
Input and output token prices, per flagship model from each classified lab - the flagship is the model with the highest published Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index for that lab, not a manual pick. Origin is a curated allowlist by company headquarters (see server/origin-class.ts); labs with an ambiguous or non-US/non-China HQ (e.g. Mistral, Cohere) are excluded rather than guessed into either bucket.
| # | Model | Origin | Quality | Input/1M | Output/1M |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Claude Opus 5 (batch) | US | 63.1 | $5.00 | $25.00 |
| 02 | OpenAI: GPT-5.6 Sol (batch) | US | 60.9 | $5.00 | $30.00 |
| 03 | MoonshotAI: Kimi K3 | China | 59.7 | $3.00 | $15.00 |
| 04 | Qwen: Qwen3.8 Max | China | 58.1 | $2.00 | $6.00 |
| 05 | SpaceXAI: Grok 4.5 | US | 55.8 | $2.00 | $6.00 |
| 06 | Meta: Muse Spark 1.1 | US | 53.2 | $1.25 | $4.25 |
| 07 | Z.ai: GLM 5.2 (batch) | China | 52.6 | $0.07 | $0.22 |
| 08 | Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash (batch) | US | 52.0 | $1.50 | $9.00 |
| 09 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 | China | 51.8 | $0.09 | $0.18 |
| 10 | MiniMax: MiniMax M3 (batch) | China | 45.4 | $0.30 | $1.20 |
| 11 | Xiaomi: MiMo-V2.5-Pro | China | 42.9 | $0.43 | $0.87 |
| 12 | Thinking Machines: Inkling (batch) | US | 42.3 | $0.95 | $4.05 |
| 13 | Tencent: Hy3 preview | China | 42.2 | $0.06 | $0.21 |
| 14 | NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) | US | 38.3 | $0.60 | $3.60 |
| 15 | Ling-3.0-flash | China | 37.8 | $0.02 | $0.06 |
| 16 | Kwaipilot: KAT-Coder-Pro V2 | China | 33.9 | $0.30 | $1.20 |
| 17 | StepFun: Step 3.7 Flash | China | 30.9 | $0.20 | $1.15 |
| 18 | Amazon: Nova 2 Lite | US | 18.4 | $0.30 | $2.50 |
One model per lab keeps this a lab-vs-lab comparison, not a raw model count - a lab with five cheap small models wouldn't otherwise be comparable to a lab with one flagship. Quality is Artificial Analysis's published Intelligence Index; it is not adjusted or reweighted here.
Frequently asked questions
Are Chinese AI models cheaper than US AI models?
Yes, based on real pricing: the median output-token price among tracked US flagship models is $5.13/1M, versus $1.01/1M for tracked Chinese flagship models - about 5.1x higher for US models.
What is the cheapest US AI model and cheapest Chinese AI model?
Among the flagship models tracked here, Amazon: Nova 2 Lite is the cheapest US model at $2.50/1M output tokens, and Ling-3.0-flash is the cheapest Chinese model at $0.06/1M.