Model Price Radar

Official registry Productivity

LLM prices on OpenRouter now and since 2023: history, drops, cheapest model for a job. No API keys.

Install

Add this to your client's MCP configuration (Claude Desktop: claude_desktop_config.json; Cursor: .cursor/mcp.json; VS Code and others use the same "mcpServers" shape).

PYPI package model-price-radar-mcp
Claude Code
claude mcp add model-price-radar -- uvx model-price-radar-mcp==0.1.0
JSON configuration (Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code)
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "model-price-radar": {
            "command": "uvx",
            "args": [
                "model-price-radar-mcp==0.1.0"
            ]
        }
    }
}

Documentation

From the project's README on GitHub, refreshed weekly. Links open on GitHub.

Contents
  1. model-price-radar-mcp
  2. Why
  3. How it works
  4. Install
  5. Tools
  6. Try these
  7. Limits
  8. Part of the keyless MCP series
  9. Development

model-price-radar-mcp

What does each LLM cost today, and did it get cheaper? An MCP server over OpenRouter's public model catalog (~450 models) plus monthly price history since 2023, rebuilt from Wayback Machine copies of the catalog. Ask Claude (or any MCP client) for the cheapest model that can do a job, what a workload will cost, or how a model's price moved.

No API keys. One line to install.

You:    Did LLM prices really go down? Show me GPT-4o and DeepSeek Chat.
Claude: [model_price_history ×2, price_changes]
        • GPT-4o: $5 / $15 per 1M tokens until Oct 2024, $2.50 / $10 since Nov 2024.
        • DeepSeek Chat changed price 12 times since mid-2024; input went from
          $0.14 to $0.26 per 1M.
        • Not everything gets cheaper: since Oct 2025 older open models went up
          as cheap hosts dropped them, e.g. Qwen 2.5 Coder 32B input $0.04 → $0.66.

Summarized from real tool output, 1 Oct 2026.

Why

You want to knowWithout itWith model-price-radar
Cheapest model with tools + vision + 200k contextScroll pricing pagesfind_models(needs=["tools","vision"], min_context=200000)
What 100k calls/month will cost on 5 modelsSpreadsheetestimate_cost ranks them with a "× cheapest" column
Did this model's price change?Nobody keeps historymodel_price_history since the model appeared
What moved in LLM pricing this quarterTwitterprice_changes lists drops, increases, newly free models
Which provider serves Llama cheapestCompare tabscompare_providers with quantization and uptime

How it works

flowchart LR
    C[Claude / MCP client] -->|tool call| S[model-price-radar-mcp]
    S --> L[OpenRouter /api/v1/models: live prices, context, capabilities]
    S --> E[OpenRouter /models/id/endpoints: per-provider prices]
    S --> H[Bundled monthly history 2023→build date]
    S --> W[Wayback Machine: months archived after the build]
    L & H & W --> C

Price history ships inside the package (18 KB, one snapshot per month since July 2023), so history answers are instant; months archived after the release are fetched from the Wayback Machine on demand and cached. Prices are US$ per 1M tokens; "blended" assumes 3 input tokens per output token.

Install

Requires uv.

Claude Code

claude mcp add model-price-radar -- uvx model-price-radar-mcp

Claude Desktop / Cursor (claude_desktop_config.json / .cursor/mcp.json)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "model-price-radar": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["model-price-radar-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Tools

ToolWhat it does
find_modelsSearch the live catalog by name, capabilities (tools, vision, reasoning, structured outputs, audio, free), price ceilings, context
estimate_costCost of a workload (tokens per call × calls) on up to 10 models, cheapest first
model_price_historyEvery price change of one model since it appeared, with % changes
price_changesSince a month: biggest drops and increases, newly free models, models added/removed
compare_providersSame model across providers: price, context, max output, quantization, uptime

Model names are forgiving: "claude sonnet" resolves to the newest Sonnet, "llama 3.1 70b" to meta-llama/llama-3.1-70b-instruct.

Prompts: cheapest_model_for (a task → recommended model with monthly cost), monthly_price_report.

Try these

  • "Cheapest model with tool calling and vision for 50k support tickets a day? Show monthly cost."
  • "How did Claude and GPT prices change since 2024?"
  • "What got cheaper in LLM pricing since January?"
  • "Which provider serves Llama 4 Maverick cheapest, and at what quantization?"

Limits

  • Prices are OpenRouter's, which usually equal each provider's list price. Batch and enterprise discounts are not included.
  • History has one point per archived month, so a change is dated "between these two months".
  • Models are tracked by OpenRouter id; a renamed id starts a new history.

Part of the keyless MCP series

Open-source MCP servers that answer one market question each, with public data and no API keys.

ServerQuestion it answers
review-miner-mcpWhat do users hate about competitor apps and games? (App Store + Steam reviews)
pricing-time-machine-mcpHow did a SaaS pricing page change over the years? (Wayback Machine)
hn-hiring-trends-mcpWhich skills are tech companies hiring for, and which are rising? (HN Who is hiring)
model-price-radar-mcp (this one)What does each LLM cost, and did it get cheaper? (OpenRouter + price history)
launch-detector-mcpWhat is a company about to launch? (certificate transparency logs)

Development

uv sync --extra dev
uv run pytest                              # offline tests with mocked OpenRouter + Wayback
uv run python scripts/smoke_live.py        # live check
uv run python scripts/build_history.py     # rebuild the bundled history (several minutes)
uv run --with rich python scripts/demo.py deepseek/deepseek-chat   # terminal demo (vhs docs/demo.tape records the GIF)

MIT © Ali Altunar

Frequently asked questions

What is Model Price Radar?

LLM prices on OpenRouter now and since 2023: history, drops, cheapest model for a job. No API keys.

How do I install Model Price Radar?

It runs on your machine. In Claude Code: claude mcp add model-price-radar -- uvx model-price-radar-mcp==0.1.0. For other clients, paste the JSON configuration from this page into their MCP settings.

Does Model Price Radar need an API key?

Its registry entry lists no required key or secret. Some features may still need an account with the service it connects to.

Is Model Price Radar open source?

Yes. Its code is on GitHub under the MIT license.

Who maintains Model Price Radar?

It is published by alialtunar. AI.tn lists it but does not maintain or endorse it.

From the official MCP Registry. Listing is not an endorsement: review a server's code and permissions before giving it access to your data.