Frontier models are the newest and most capable models from the leading providers. Three features shape their economics:
- Premium pricing. The price of a fixed level of capability falls quickly over time, but each new frontier model launches at a premium, and work tends to migrate to it.
- Reasoning. Many frontier models reason before they answer, generating reasoning tokens billed at the output rate.
- Fast obsolescence. Today's frontier is next year's mid-tier, which matters for any commitment or tuning built around one model.
The useful question is not which model is best, but which is the cheapest setup that clears the quality floor for each task. That usually means reserving frontier models for the work that needs them and routing the rest to smaller ones, then checking that the cheaper route still meets the floor.
