Cost to Reach GPT-4 Level Intelligence Plummets 214x in Under Two Years
McDonaghMatthew · x · 2026-08-08
Citing Epoch AI's inference price analysis, the author notes that the API cost to achieve GPT-4-level intelligence (measured by MMLU) has plummeted from $37.50 per million tokens in March 2023 to just $0.175 in February 2025.
This marks a 214x decline in less than two years for the same level of capability. The author argues that the focus should shift from which model is smartest to how quickly adequate intelligence is becoming cheap enough to embed everywhere. Once capable inference becomes inexpensive, we will stop rationing it and integrate it into every product, workflow, and decision.
Related event: Cost of GPT-4-Level AI Plummets 99.5% in Two Years(2 posts)→
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