BREAKING
AI Pricing Shifts to Pay-Per-Use
Old Flat Fee vs New Seat + Usage
Old Model
flat-rate
●
$200/mo Premium
●
$40/mo Standard
●
Tokens bundled in
New Model
usage-based
●
~$20/user/mo access
●
Tokens billed separately
●
Standard API rates
How the Transition Rolled Out
1
Anthropic revises Nov 2025
↓
2
OpenAI Codex token-based Apr 2
↓
3
Extended to Enterprise Apr 23
↓
4
Becomes industry standard
Claude API Output Rates
Haiku 4.5
5
Sonnet 4.6
15
Opus 4.6
25
0
%
users use half compute
0
$
avg daily spend
0
%
stay under $12/day
Flat Fees Give Way to Usage
AI NEWS BLITZ
OpenAI and Anthropic are moving enterprise customers from flat fees to usage-based pricing.