model-cost-compare

model-cost-compare is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from mergisi/awesome-openclaw-agents. It costs 104 tokens per session (1,141 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for comparing the estimated cost and suitability of several AI models for a coding or automation task.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when deciding between models, estimating token costs, or asking whether a local model can handle a task.
Why use it?
It helps you choose an affordable model without guessing whether a cheaper one can handle the work. The listed prices are rough estimates and should be checked with the providers.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Which agent this was written for is unclear — built for openclaw. Also seen: positional $N argument; built for openclaw.

Good fit Use it when deciding between models, estimating token costs, or asking whether a local model can handle a task.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/mergisi/awesome-openclaw-agents/model-cost-compare
About the project

awesome-openclaw-agents is a curated collection of ready-to-use SOUL.md configurations that define AI agents for tasks across areas such as development, marketing, finance, support, and automation. It is for OpenClaw users who want predefined agent roles and workflows to adapt or deploy. The catalogue entries are agent-related skills drawn from this collection.

mergisi/awesome-openclaw-agents · 3,955 stars · on GitHub · crewclaw.com

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add mergisi/awesome-openclaw-agents --skill model-cost-compare
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mergisi/awesome-openclaw-agents

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for model-cost-compare

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mergisi/awesome-openclaw-agents/model-cost-compare/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/mergisi/awesome-openclaw-agents/model-cost-compare)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mergisi/awesome-openclaw-agents/model-cost-compare"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mergisi/awesome-openclaw-agents/model-cost-compare/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for model-cost-compare

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mergisi/awesome-openclaw-agents/model-cost-compare"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mergisi/awesome-openclaw-agents/model-cost-compare.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 104 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,141 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00104 $0.01141
Opus 5 $0.00052 $0.00571
Sonnet 5 $0.00021 $0.00228
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00114

Measured 12d ago against content hash 6704391dbf64, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

model-cost-compare scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 12d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/claude/model-cost-compare/SKILL.md · 81 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 81 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Model Cost Compare

Given a task description (and optionally a rough prompt / input size), estimate the cost of running it on each available model tier and recommend the cheapest one that can actually do the job.

When to use

  • "Which model should I use for X?"
  • "Is it worth running this on Opus or will Sonnet do?"
  • "Can I offload this to a local model?"
  • "/model-cost-compare — classify 10k support tickets"

Pricing table (indicative — always flag as "check provider docs")

Use these rough figures. They are not exact; confirm before quoting real numbers to the user.

Model Tier Input ($/1M tok) Output ($/1M tok) Context Strengths
Opus 4.6 (1M) Frontier ~$15 ~$75 1M Agentic, long-context, hard reasoning
Sonnet 4.6 Mid ~$3 ~$15 400k Everyday coding, agents, drafting
GLM-5.1 Budget hosted ~$0.60 ~$2.20 256k Cheap bulk work, decent reasoning
Minimax M2.7 Budget hosted ~$0.40 ~$1.80 256k Very cheap, OK for templated output
Gemma 4 (local) On device $0 marginal $0 marginal 32k Free but slow, weak at multi-step logic

Indicative pricing as of OpenClaw 2026.4.11. Check the provider docs before billing decisions.

Instructions

  1. Parse the user's task. Extract:
    • Task type: reasoning, extraction, classification, drafting, translation, agentic tool use, long-context synthesis.
    • Input size estimate: in tokens. If the user says "10k tickets averaging 500 tokens", that's 5M input tokens. If unknown, ask for a rough size.
    • Output size estimate: short label? full essay? JSON record?
    • Volume: one-off or batch?
  2. Rule out incapable models. Use this capability floor:
    • Agentic multi-tool flows with long reasoning → Opus or Sonnet only.
    • Structured extraction / classification with clear schema → any tier, including Gemma 4 local.
    • Long-context synthesis (>400k tokens) → Opus only.
    • Privacy-sensitive data that cannot leave the machine → Gemma 4 local only.
  3. For each surviving model, compute:
    cost = (input_tokens / 1_000_000) * input_price
         + (output_tokens / 1_000_000) * output_price
    
    Multiply by volume. Show your arithmetic so the user can sanity-check.
  4. Print the comparison as a Markdown table sorted cheapest first. Bold the recommended row.
  5. End with a one-line recommendation: Recommended: <model> — <1-sentence reason>.

Read the full file on GitHub · 81 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 12d ago First seen · 81 lines · 104 tokens per session scan A 6704391dbf64

Subscribe to this mod's changes

model-cost-compare is a skill published in the GitHub repository mergisi/awesome-openclaw-agents (3,955 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 104 tokens to every session and 1,141 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.