About & methodology

How we collect data

• Prices. All prices are in USD, excluding tax, for individual plans unless noted. Always confirm on the vendor's page before you buy.
• Vendor pages first. Prices and quota rules are read from the vendor's own pricing or help pages. Each row lists its sources and the date we checked them.
• Secondary sources are labelled. If we can't read the vendor page, or a fact only comes from press coverage, the row or change entry says so.
• "not published" is a value. If a vendor doesn't say how many tokens, messages or minutes a plan includes, we write not published. We never fill in a guess, and never use zero for unknown.
• Estimates stay estimates. Where a vendor publishes ranges (for example Codex Plus messages per 5 hours, OpenCode Go requests per 5 hours), we show their range, not a single number.
• Machine help, human review. A script re-fetches vendor pages and flags changes; a human reads the change before any row is updated.

What "usage" labels mean

$ allowance

The vendor states a dollar or credit amount per month (GitHub Copilot AI credits, Kilo Pass credits).

Estimates

The vendor publishes message or request estimates (Codex Plus, OpenCode Go, Windsurf).

Relative only

Only multiples are published, like "Max 5x = 5x Pro" (Claude, Cursor tiers, Codex Pro tiers).

Pay-as-you-go

No included quota; you pay for inference (Cline, Kilo free tier and Gateway).

Not published

The vendor gives no usable figure.

We deliberately don't compute a "cost per token" across vendors. They meter usage in incompatible ways (dollars, messages, multiples), so a single ranking would imply precision that doesn't exist.

Community burn reports

• Submitted through the report form, reviewed by a human before publication, and always labelled self-reported, unverified.
• We never seed or invent reports. If a plan has none, the page says so.
• We show no aggregate for a plan and window until it has at least 5 approved reports, and then show medians with the sample size.
• Contact details are never published. Reports that look like marketing, spam or duplicates are rejected.

Plan-change log

We log price changes, new or retired plans, quota changes and model-access changes that affect individual plans. Dates are the effective date when published; otherwise the announcement date; if neither is published we say so and show when we first observed it. Entries without a primary vendor source are marked "reported".

Money and independence

• Affiliate links. Some links may become affiliate links in the future; if so they will be clearly labeled "Paid link", we may earn a commission if you buy through one, and they will never change rankings, the data or the change log. Right now: no affiliate links are live and no affiliate partnership exists.
• Sponsorship. Paid placements are labelled "Sponsored" with the sponsor's name; see Sponsor for the rules sponsors accept. Sponsorship inquiries: craftsman@signalcafe.org.
• No vendor affiliation. TierVerdict is independent of every vendor listed.

Trademarks and accuracy

• Trademarks. All product, plan and company names mentioned on this site belong to their respective owners. TierVerdict is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any of them.
• Where the data comes from. Prices and limits are taken from public vendor pages, and each entry shows the date we checked it.
• It may be out of date. Vendors change plans without notice, and we can make mistakes. Always verify current prices and limits with the vendor before you buy.

Limits of this site

• Individual plans only for now; Team, Enterprise, education and regional pricing are not tracked.
• Not yet covered: Gemini CLI/Code Assist, Amp, Zed, JetBrains AI, Augment and others. Suggest one via a correction.
• Vendors change pricing without notice. Check the date in the "Last verified" column, and confirm with the vendor before buying.

Spot an error? Send a correction

Spotted something wrong, stale or missing, or are you a vendor with an update? Send us the vendor URL that shows it and we'll check it, fix it and log the fix. Reach us on X: @its_michaelroy.

Open data

All data is plain JSON: plans.json, changes.json, reports.json.