Two scatter charts of the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index for 38 configurations of 23 language models, including reasoning-effort variants of frontier models. The first plots intelligence against tasks completed per dollar: fifteen configurations form the cost frontier, from GPT-5.6 Luna at low effort near 114 tasks per dollar and intelligence 34, up to Claude Opus 5 at max effort with 0.43 tasks per dollar and intelligence 63. The second plots intelligence against tasks completed per second: thirteen configurations form the speed frontier, all of them OpenAI GPT-5.6 or Anthropic Claude configurations, from GPT-5.6 Luna without reasoning at about one task per 12 seconds up to Claude Opus 5 at max effort at one task per roughly 430 seconds. A third chart is a rotatable three-dimensional scatter of all three axes at once: twenty-one configurations are unbeaten across intelligence, cost and speed jointly, including GPT-5.6 Luna at xhigh effort and GPT-5.6 Terra at max effort, which appear on neither two-dimensional frontier. A full data table follows the charts.

LLM economics ยท artificialanalysis.ai ยท retrieved Aug 10, 2026

Intelligence vs. task progress per dollar

The Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index plotted against task throughput on two budgets: dollars, then seconds. Frontier models are shown at every benchmarked reasoning-effort level, connected by dashed effort curves. Up and to the right is better. The cobalt line marks each Pareto frontier: configurations nothing else beats on both axes at once.

The cost frontier

Task progress per dollar — the inverse of cost per Intelligence Index task.

Pareto frontier Dominated Effort curve log-scale x · hover or tab to points

The speed frontier

Task progress per second — the inverse of end-to-end time per Intelligence Index task. Same configurations, wall-clock budget instead of dollars. Muse Spark 1.2 publishes no time figure and is absent here.

Pareto frontier Dominated Effort curve log-scale x · hover or tab to points

The three-way frontier

All three at once — intelligence up, task progress per dollar and per second on the floor axes (both log). The translucent staircase is the frontier surface: every configuration on or below it is matched or beaten on all three axes at once by a cobalt point at a step corner. Wall shadows are the two 2-D frontiers above. Muse Spark 1.2 (no time data) is absent.

3-way frontier Dominated Effort variant Frontier surface 2-D frontier shadows drag to rotate · hover or tab to points

One effort dial owns the cheap half

GPT-5.6 Luna’s effort settings span 21 to 114 tasks per dollar, and four of its six configurations sit on the cost frontier — at low effort it does an Intelligence Index task for under a penny. Only DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 breaks the Luna run, dominating its xhigh setting.

Effort buys less as you climb

Walking the cost frontier from intelligence 49.9 to 63.1 multiplies cost per task 86×. Effort dials show the same shape in miniature: Claude Opus 5 pays 5.5× from low to max for +10.6 points, and its final step (xhigh→max) pays 1.3× for just +0.5.

Photo finish at the top

GPT-5.6 Sol (max) is edged off the cost frontier by Claude Opus 5 (high) — a higher index (61.5 vs 60.9) at essentially the same cost ($1.227 vs $1.231 per task). GLM-5.2’s ~42% price cut vaulted it onto the line; Claude Fable 5 remains dominated only by its Opus 5 siblings.

The speed frontier is proprietary

Every point on the tasks-per-second frontier is an OpenAI GPT-5.6 or Anthropic Claude configuration — and Claude Fable 5, off the cost frontier, is on this one. The open-weights models that rule the cost chart fall away when the budget is wall-clock: Kimi K3 (max) takes ~9 minutes per task.

Balanced picks only 3-D reveals

GPT-5.6 Luna (xhigh) and GPT-5.6 Terra (max) sit on neither 2-D frontier — each loses on pure cost and on pure speed — yet nothing beats them on all three axes at once. Jointly, 21 of the 37 timed configurations are unbeaten.

All configurations

Every benchmarked configuration, including reasoning-effort variants of frontier models, ranked by intelligence index (ties broken by task progress per dollar). Hover a row to locate its point on the charts.

#ModelLabIntelligenceCost / taskTasks / $1Time / taskTasks / sec