I've been evaluating Claude Opus 4.6, GPT 5.2, and other models in a simulation environment I've built. The verdict: I ran out of money

This is why I genuinely believe that in the model game, there is no moat, and there will always be tremendous pressure for open source and cheaper models. The majority of the world economy doesn't want to pay $21 (!!!) per million tokens, even if they can afford to

Gemini Flash got the most tho. Cheap, fast, and kinda smart.

I tend to prefer GLM 4.5 Air when I’m going for cheap and fast, but Gemini Flash is pretty solid