OpenAI vs Anthropic vs Bedrock vs Vertex vs Gemini: True per-token cost in 2026

Per-token list prices hide the actual cost of running production LLM workloads. We measured a 340% variance between advertised pricing and real monthly spend across five deployment Introduction: The Hidden Complexity of LLM Pricing Per-token list prices hide the actual cost of running production LLM workloads. We measured a 340% variance between advertised pricing and real monthly spend across five deployments using identical request volumes. The gap comes from three cost layers pro...