Frontier Models Reference
Frontier Models (Cloud API) Reference
Last verified: April 2026. Frontier commercial models shift pricing and capabilities frequently. Use this page to benchmark cloud costs against local deployment, and to know what options are available when your local hardware is insufficient.
The “Big Three” Cloud Providers
If your local model (like an 8B or 32B model) is failing at a complex task, these are the flagship “Frontier” models you escalate the problem to.
1. Anthropic (Claude)
Claude consistently scores at the top of SWE-bench Verified among closed models and produces natural, non-formulaic prose. Context window: 200K tokens. Pricing and docs.
- Flagship: Claude 4.6 Opus (Highest reasoning, expensive: ~$5.00 / $25.00 per 1M tokens)
- Workhorse: Claude 4.6 Sonnet (The sweet spot for coding and speed)
- Fast/Cheap: Claude 4.5 Haiku (Near-instant, budget-friendly for high volume)
2. OpenAI (GPT Series)
The default enterprise backbone. Strong at structured tool calling and extended chain-of-thought reasoning. Context window: 128K tokens on GPT-4o. Pricing and docs.
- Flagship General: GPT-5.4 (~$1.25 - $2.50 / $10 - $15 per 1M tokens)
- Fast/Cheap: GPT-5.4 Mini (Cheaper, fast reasoning)
3. Google (Gemini)
Best known for its 1M+ token context windows and native multimodal processing (video, audio, images). Pricing and docs.
- Flagship: Gemini 3.1 Pro (~$2.00 / $12.00 per 1M tokens)
- Workhorse: Gemini 3.1 Flash (Extremely fast, handles video and 1M+ context natively)
4. Mistral
European provider with strong multilingual performance and open-weight releases. Context window: 128K tokens. Pricing and docs.
- Flagship: Mistral Large 3 (~$2.00 / $6.00 per 1M tokens)
Pricing Comparison
Prices change frequently. Verify at the provider’s pricing page before committing.
| Provider | Model | Input ($/1M tokens) | Output ($/1M tokens) | Context window | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | $3.00 | $15.00 | 200K | Coding, long documents |
| Anthropic | Claude Opus | $15.00 | $75.00 | 200K | Complex reasoning |
| OpenAI | GPT-4o | $2.50 | $10.00 | 128K | Tool calling, general tasks |
| OpenAI | GPT-4o mini | $0.15 | $0.60 | 128K | High-volume, budget work |
| Gemini 2.0 Flash | $0.10 | $0.40 | 1M+ | Fast, multimodal, long context | |
| Gemini 2.5 Pro | $1.25 | $10.00 | 1M+ | Complex reasoning, large codebases | |
| Mistral | Mistral Large 3 | $2.00 | $6.00 | 128K | Multilingual, European data residency |
Prices change frequently. Verify at the provider’s pricing page before committing.
When to use Cloud vs. Local
We recommend Local-First, Cloud-Fallback.
Use Local Models when:
- The data is highly sensitive, PII, or proprietary code.
- You are doing high-volume/batch processing (e.g., summarizing 10,000 news articles).
- The task is simple (RAG retrieval parsing, sentiment analysis, basic scripting).
- You are offline.
Use Frontier APIs when:
- Working with complex, multi-file code refactoring (SWE-bench tier difficulties).
- You require deep, chain-of-thought mathematical reasoning (o4 tier).
- You need to dump an immense amount of context into the prompt (e.g., Gemini’s multi-million token context limits).
Free Tiers for Trying It Out
If you don’t have the hardware for local models yet, you can use these frontier models for free (with restrictive rate limits):
- Google AI Studio: Generous free tier for Gemini 2.0 Flash.
- Claude.ai: Free conversational access to Sonnet.
- ChatGPT: Free conversational access to GPT-4o/o4-mini.
For open-weight model alternatives you can run locally, see the Models Reference.
For routing between local and cloud autonomously, check out our Local + Cloud Module.