7 ms·

The "heavy" model is $300/month. These prices seem to keep increasing while we were promised they'll keep decreasing. It feels like a lot of these companies do

The "heavy" model is $300/month. These prices seem to keep increasing while we were promised they'll keep decreasing. It feels like a lot of these companies do not have enough GPUs which is a problem Google likely does not have. I can already use Gemini 2.5 Pro for free in AI studio. Crazier still, I can even set the thinking budget to a whopping 32k and still not pay a dime. Maybe Gemini 3.0 will be available for free as well.

BoredPositron 1y ago
It's because a lot of the advancements are post training the models themselves have stagnated. Look at the heavy "model"...
Havoc 1y ago
It’s the inference time scaling - this is going to create a whole new level of have vs have nots split. The vast majority of the world can’t afford 100s of dollars a month
- johnb231 1y ago
  That is for professional or commercial use, not casual home users.
pzo 1y ago
also their api pricing is a little misleading - it only matches sonnet 4 pricing ($3/$15) only "for request under 128k" (whatever it means) but above that it's 2x more.
- vessenes 1y ago
  That 128k is a reference to the context window — how many tokens you put in to the start. Presumably Grok 4 with 128k context window is running on less hardware (it needs much less RAM than 256k) and they route it accordingly internally.
ljlolel 1y ago
More of an issue of market share than # of gpus?
altbdoor 1y ago
It's important to note that pricing for Gemini has been increasing too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44457371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44457371
- Workaccount2 1y ago
  I'm honestly impressed that the sutro team could write a whole post complaining about Flash, and not once mention that Flash was actually 2 different models, and even go further to compare the price of Flash non-thinking to Flash Thinking. The team is either scarily incompetent, or purposely misleading. Google replaced flash non-thinking with Flash-lite. It rebalanced the cost of flash thinking.
- CamperBob2 1y ago
  Also important to note that Gemini has gotten a lot slower, just over the past few weeks.
  - dmix 1y ago
    I find Gemini basically unusable for coding for that reason. Claude never fails me
ignoramous 1y ago
> Gemini 2.5 Pro for free ... It is Google. So, I'd pay attention to data collection feeding back in to training or evaluation. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44379036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44379036
- lifthrasiir 1y ago
  While Google is so explicit about that, I have a good reason to believe that this actually happens in most if not all massive LLM services. I think Google's free offerings are more about vendor lock-in, a common Google tactic.
  - ignoramous 1y ago
    > Google's free offerings are more about vendor lock-in Pricing the competition out & then turning the screws on locked-in users.
    - 6510 1y ago
      Or delete the project
    - falcor84 1y ago
      I have a lot of complaints to make about Google (half of them about them killing products), but I don't think we should complain about them locking users in. I don't see any lock-in at all in regards to LLM usage (it's pretty trivial to switch providers), and more generally, takeout.google.com is a shining beacon for what I would want every provider to offer.
  - bionhoward 1y ago
    What makes you say Google is explicit about the fact they have humans and AIs reading everything? It’s got a confusing multi-layer hierarchy of different privacy policies which hide what’s happening to folks’ conversations behind vague language. They promote it as being free but don’t even link to the privacy policies when they launch stuff, effectively trying to bait noobs into pasting in confidential information
brookst 1y ago
Who promised that there would be no advanced models with high costs? Prices for the same number of tokens at the level of capability an are falling. But just like Moore’s law most certainly did NOT say that chips would get no more complex than the 1103 1kb DRAM but would shrink from 10mm^2 to a speck far too small to see.
worldsavior 1y ago
Why number of GPUs is the problem and not the amount of GPUs usage? I don't think buying GPUs is the problem, but if you have tons of GPUs it can be very expensive. I presume that's the reason it's so expensive, especially with LLMs.
serbuvlad 1y ago
> These prices seem to keep increasing while we were promised they'll keep decreasing. A Ferrari is more expensive than the model T. The most expensive computer is a lot more expensive than the first PC. The price that usually falls is: * The entry level. * The same performance over time. But the _price range_ gets wider. That's fine. That's a sign of maturity. The only difference this time is that the entry level was artificially 0 (or very low) because of VC funding.
- PaulHoule 1y ago
  But where is the value? If it could write like George Will or Thomas Sowell or Fred Hayek or even William Loeb that would be one thing. But it hears dog whistles and barks which makes it a dog. Except a real dog is soft and has a warm breath, knows your scent, is genuinely happy when you come home and will take a chomp out of the leg of anyone who invades your home at night. We are also getting this kind of discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44502981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44502981 where Grok exhibited the kind of behavior that puts "degenerate" in "degenerate behavior". Why do people expect anything more? Ten years ago you could be a conservative with a conscience -- now if you are you start The Bulwark.
  - ben_w 1y ago
    > If it could write like George Will or Thomas Sowell or Fred Hayek or even William Loeb Having only barely heard of these authors even in the collective, I bet most models could do a better job of mimicking their style than I could. Perhaps not well enough to be of interest to you, and I will absolutely agree that LLMs are "low intelligence" in the sense that they need far more examples than any organic life does, but many of them will have had those examples and I definitely have not. > We are also getting this kind of discussion > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44502981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44502981 Even just a few years ago, people were acting as if a "smart" AI automatically meant a "moral AI". Unfortunately, these things can be both capable* and unpleasant. * which doesn't require them to be "properly intelligent"
    - 1y ago
XCSme 1y ago
> These prices seem to keep increasing Well, valuations keep increasing, they have to make the calculations work somehow.
greatpostman 1y ago
300 a month is cheap for what is basically a junior engineer
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  Not a junior engineer in a developed country, but what was previously an offshore junior engineer tasked with doing the repetitive labor too costly for western labor.
- handfuloflight 1y ago
  It's a senior engineer when maneuvered by a senior engineer.
v5v3 1y ago
You have to have a high RRP to negotiate any volume deals down from. Like the other AI companies, they will want to sign up companies.
dragonwriter 1y ago
> These prices seem to keep increasing while we were promised they'll keep decreasin I don't remeber anyone promising that, but whoever promised you that, in some period of time which includes our current present, frontier public model pricing would be monotonically decreasing was either lting or badly misguided. While there will be short term deviations, the overall arc for that will continue be upward. OTOH, the models available at any given price point will also radically improve, to the point where you can follow a curve of both increasing quality and decreasing price, so long as you don't want a model at the quality frontier.
sim7c00 1y ago
money money money, its a rich mans world...
briandw 1y ago
O3 was just reduced in price by 80%. Grok4 is a pretty good deal for having just been released and being so much better. The token price is the same as grok 3 for the not heavy model. Google is loosing money to try and gain relevance. I guess i’m not sure what your point is?
oblio 1y ago
> These prices seem to keep increasing while we were promised they'll keep decreasing. Aren't they all stil losing money, regardless?

BoredPositron 1y ago

It's because a lot of the advancements are post training the models themselves have stagnated. Look at the heavy "model"...

Havoc 1y ago

It’s the inference time scaling - this is going to create a whole new level of have vs have nots split. The vast majority of the world can’t afford 100s of dollars a month

johnb231 1y ago
That is for professional or commercial use, not casual home users.

pzo 1y ago

also their api pricing is a little misleading - it only matches sonnet 4 pricing ($3/$15) only "for request under 128k" (whatever it means) but above that it's 2x more.

vessenes 1y ago
That 128k is a reference to the context window — how many tokens you put in to the start. Presumably Grok 4 with 128k context window is running on less hardware (it needs much less RAM than 256k) and they route it accordingly internally.

ljlolel 1y ago

More of an issue of market share than # of gpus?

altbdoor 1y ago

It's important to note that pricing for Gemini has been increasing too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44457371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44457371

Workaccount2 1y ago
I'm honestly impressed that the sutro team could write a whole post complaining about Flash, and not once mention that Flash was actually 2 different models, and even go further to compare the price of Flash non-thinking to Flash Thinking. The team is either scarily incompetent, or purposely misleading. Google replaced flash non-thinking with Flash-lite. It rebalanced the cost of flash thinking.
CamperBob2 1y ago
Also important to note that Gemini has gotten a lot slower, just over the past few weeks.
- dmix 1y ago
  I find Gemini basically unusable for coding for that reason. Claude never fails me

ignoramous 1y ago

> Gemini 2.5 Pro for free ... It is Google. So, I'd pay attention to data collection feeding back in to training or evaluation. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44379036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44379036

lifthrasiir 1y ago
While Google is so explicit about that, I have a good reason to believe that this actually happens in most if not all massive LLM services. I think Google's free offerings are more about vendor lock-in, a common Google tactic.
- ignoramous 1y ago
  > Google's free offerings are more about vendor lock-in Pricing the competition out & then turning the screws on locked-in users.
  - 6510 1y ago
    Or delete the project
  - falcor84 1y ago
    I have a lot of complaints to make about Google (half of them about them killing products), but I don't think we should complain about them locking users in. I don't see any lock-in at all in regards to LLM usage (it's pretty trivial to switch providers), and more generally, takeout.google.com is a shining beacon for what I would want every provider to offer.
- bionhoward 1y ago
  What makes you say Google is explicit about the fact they have humans and AIs reading everything? It’s got a confusing multi-layer hierarchy of different privacy policies which hide what’s happening to folks’ conversations behind vague language. They promote it as being free but don’t even link to the privacy policies when they launch stuff, effectively trying to bait noobs into pasting in confidential information

brookst 1y ago

Who promised that there would be no advanced models with high costs? Prices for the same number of tokens at the level of capability an are falling. But just like Moore’s law most certainly did NOT say that chips would get no more complex than the 1103 1kb DRAM but would shrink from 10mm^2 to a speck far too small to see.

worldsavior 1y ago

Why number of GPUs is the problem and not the amount of GPUs usage? I don't think buying GPUs is the problem, but if you have tons of GPUs it can be very expensive. I presume that's the reason it's so expensive, especially with LLMs.

serbuvlad 1y ago

> These prices seem to keep increasing while we were promised they'll keep decreasing. A Ferrari is more expensive than the model T. The most expensive computer is a lot more expensive than the first PC. The price that usually falls is: * The entry level. * The same performance over time. But the _price range_ gets wider. That's fine. That's a sign of maturity. The only difference this time is that the entry level was artificially 0 (or very low) because of VC funding.

PaulHoule 1y ago
But where is the value? If it could write like George Will or Thomas Sowell or Fred Hayek or even William Loeb that would be one thing. But it hears dog whistles and barks which makes it a dog. Except a real dog is soft and has a warm breath, knows your scent, is genuinely happy when you come home and will take a chomp out of the leg of anyone who invades your home at night. We are also getting this kind of discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44502981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44502981 where Grok exhibited the kind of behavior that puts "degenerate" in "degenerate behavior". Why do people expect anything more? Ten years ago you could be a conservative with a conscience -- now if you are you start The Bulwark.
- ben_w 1y ago
  > If it could write like George Will or Thomas Sowell or Fred Hayek or even William Loeb Having only barely heard of these authors even in the collective, I bet most models could do a better job of mimicking their style than I could. Perhaps not well enough to be of interest to you, and I will absolutely agree that LLMs are "low intelligence" in the sense that they need far more examples than any organic life does, but many of them will have had those examples and I definitely have not. > We are also getting this kind of discussion > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44502981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44502981 Even just a few years ago, people were acting as if a "smart" AI automatically meant a "moral AI". Unfortunately, these things can be both capable* and unpleasant. * which doesn't require them to be "properly intelligent"
  - 1y ago

XCSme 1y ago

> These prices seem to keep increasing Well, valuations keep increasing, they have to make the calculations work somehow.

greatpostman 1y ago

300 a month is cheap for what is basically a junior engineer

FirmwareBurner 1y ago
Not a junior engineer in a developed country, but what was previously an offshore junior engineer tasked with doing the repetitive labor too costly for western labor.
handfuloflight 1y ago
It's a senior engineer when maneuvered by a senior engineer.

v5v3 1y ago

You have to have a high RRP to negotiate any volume deals down from. Like the other AI companies, they will want to sign up companies.

dragonwriter 1y ago

> These prices seem to keep increasing while we were promised they'll keep decreasin I don't remeber anyone promising that, but whoever promised you that, in some period of time which includes our current present, frontier public model pricing would be monotonically decreasing was either lting or badly misguided. While there will be short term deviations, the overall arc for that will continue be upward. OTOH, the models available at any given price point will also radically improve, to the point where you can follow a curve of both increasing quality and decreasing price, so long as you don't want a model at the quality frontier.

sim7c00 1y ago

money money money, its a rich mans world...

briandw 1y ago

O3 was just reduced in price by 80%. Grok4 is a pretty good deal for having just been released and being so much better. The token price is the same as grok 3 for the not heavy model. Google is loosing money to try and gain relevance. I guess i’m not sure what your point is?

oblio 1y ago

> These prices seem to keep increasing while we were promised they'll keep decreasing. Aren't they all stil losing money, regardless?