OpenAI and Anthropic face pricing pressure as Chinese AI models undercut costs by up to 9x

Running the same AI workload through Anthropic’s Claude costs $4,811. Running it through Zhipu’s GLM model costs $544. That’s nearly a 9x price difference for equivalent work, and enterprise customers have started doing the math.

Chinese AI companies are undercutting OpenAI and Anthropic so aggressively on price that the two most prominent US AI firms are now scrambling to respond. OpenAI is reportedly considering major token price cuts, and Anthropic is expected to follow. The timing could not be worse: both companies are preparing for public market debuts.

The numbers tell the story

A comparison of workload costs across leading AI models paints a stark picture. Anthropic’s Claude rings in at $4,811 per workload. OpenAI’s ChatGPT comes in lower at $3,357, but still far above the Chinese alternatives. DeepSeek prices the same workload at $1,071. Moonshot’s Kimi model does it for $948. And Zhipu’s GLM sits at just $544.

According to recent data, 45% of companies now spend over $100,000 per month on AI, up from 20% the prior year.