I Ran 8 AI APIs Through the Same 50 Prompts — Here's the Real Cost Breakdown

Disclosure: I'm 于侃 (Yu Kan), the developer behind NovAI, an API gateway for Chinese AI models. Every number in this article was measured by running the test script below. I tested DeepSeek's official API separately to verify the gateway adds zero overhead. The test prompts and full results are open-sourced — links at the bottom.

Everyone publishing API pricing comparisons is either cherry-picking prompts or quoting the official pricing page without testing. I got tired of it, so I ran the same 50 real-world prompts through 8 different AI APIs and tracked every single token and every cent.

Here's what I actually found — including a few results that surprised me.

TL;DR

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