Editorial Policy

Last updated: May 2026

Who Writes and Edits This Site

AIModelCalc is written and maintained by Gia Gray, who founded the site in early 2025 after several years of building AI-powered products and managing API costs across multiple providers. All articles, guides, and pricing data on this site originate from Gia's direct experience and research unless otherwise noted.

There is no writing team generating volume. Content is published when it's ready and accurate, not on a content calendar schedule.

How Content Gets Written

Every guide and article on AIModelCalc is written from a practitioner's perspective — meaning the starting point is a real question or problem that came up while actually building with AI APIs, not a keyword tool. We don't write content because it ranks; we write it because the information is useful and hard to find in one place.

Our process for each piece:

• Primary research first. Before writing anything about a model's pricing or capabilities, we verify the current published rates directly from the provider's pricing page. We don't rely on third-party aggregators as a primary source.
• Real numbers required. Any estimate or benchmark in our content includes the specific assumptions used — model name, token counts, request volume, date of the calculation. General claims like "this model is cheaper" are always backed by a specific example.
• Opinions are labeled. We distinguish between factual claims ("GPT-4o costs $2.50 per million input tokens as of May 2026") and our own assessments ("for most chatbot applications, GPT-4o mini offers the best cost-to-quality ratio"). The latter is our view — informed by experience, but not objective fact.

Pricing Data Standards

The calculator and all pricing references on this site are sourced from official provider documentation. Specifically:

• OpenAI: platform.openai.com/docs/pricing
• Anthropic: anthropic.com/api/pricing
• Google: ai.google.dev/pricing
• Meta / Llama models: via hosting providers (Together AI, Replicate, Fireworks AI)
• Mistral AI: mistral.ai/pricing
• xAI: x.ai/api/pricing
• Cohere: cohere.com/pricing

We update pricing when providers make announcements. There is typically a short delay between a provider's announcement and our update — usually hours to days, not weeks. See our pricing methodology page for detail on how we handle caching discounts, batch pricing, and model deprecation.

Independence and Commercial Relationships

AIModelCalc does not have affiliate relationships with any AI provider. We don't receive payment, API credits, or other compensation for how we represent a model in comparisons. Our rankings and recommendations are based on our own assessments of cost and capability — not commercial agreements.

The site runs Google AdSense display ads. These ads are served automatically and do not influence our editorial content. Advertisers have no input into which models we recommend or how we describe their pricing.

Update and Correction Policy

Every article on this site displays a "last updated" date. We review and update articles when:

• A provider changes their pricing or launches a new model
• We discover an error in our own content
• A reader reports an inaccuracy (we take these seriously)
• The article is more than six months old and the information may have drifted

When we correct a factual error, we update the article and note the correction at the bottom if the original error was material. We don't quietly edit and pretend the mistake didn't happen.

To report an error, use the contact page. Pricing corrections are typically addressed within 24–48 hours.

What We Don't Do

• We don't publish content about models we haven't researched independently
• We don't publish pricing estimates without citing the source date
• We don't accept guest posts or sponsored content
• We don't make claims about model quality (speed, accuracy, reasoning) without noting they are subjective assessments