AI token prices are hitting new record lows

A closely followed measure of artificial intelligence token prices touched fresh lows this week, the latest sign of deflating prices in an increasingly competitive landscape.

The LLM Token Expenditure Index, a key gauge of daily prices from intelligence firm Silicon Data, fell to 97 cents on Monday. That marked the index's lowest reading since its creation late last year and has more than halved from the high recorded earlier this summer.

Silicon Data's index tracks the going rate on the market for a large-language model token.

A sharp slide in prices can mean AI model users will need to shell out less to run inquiries on popular chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude or Google's Gemini.

But it can be bad news for the companies behind the models. A lower index price can condition consumers to expect lower rates for access to these offerings, resulting in less pricing power for providers.

The recent drop is driven in part by the rise of open-source Chinese models like Moonshot's Kimi K3 that can fetch lower prices than alternatives from leading frontier lab, according to a Tuesday post from Charles-Henry Monchau, investing chief at Syz Group.

OpenAI announced price cuts two of its GPT-5.6 AI models in late July, while Monchau said other frontier labs have rolled out offerings with "dynamic pricing" capabilities that can allow access rates to rise and fall with demand. These developments put more downward pressure on the market rate for tokens.