AI for GenX · From the Lab

The Model Map

The decoder ring, laminated. The names you keep hearing are cars (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) and the "new releases" flooding your feed are engines that drop into them, usually while you sleep. This map shows each car, the engines under its hood, what it costs to keep running, and which ones you could actually own. Tap any row to pop the hood.

🚗The car is the product you open. You pick one of these. That is the whole decision.
⚙️The engines are the models inside (Sol, Fable, Flash). They upgrade themselves; you mostly just benefit.
🔑Lease or own: most cars you lease monthly on their computers. Open models are engines anyone can download and own.
Snapshot · Verified July 13, 2026
Every price, engine name, and plan mapping checked against the companies' own pricing and release pages on the date above. They change monthly; the date stamp is your grain of salt.
Company · ProductBest atFree?Price ladder

This map covers the everyday general-purpose cars only, the chatbots you will actually touch. The image, video, and voice specialists get their own map another day. Prices are the consumer plans, monthly; business and enterprise tiers exist everywhere and are not this page's problem. Engine-to-plan mappings come from each company's own pricing pages; independent quality reads lean on Artificial Analysis, cited as theirs. No sponsors, no affiliate links, and by the time you read this some of it will already be different. That is why the date stamp is up top, and why this page gets updated so you do not have to keep up.

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