Methodology

Every number on CostMath comes from a dataset of vendor pricing pages. Each row in that dataset carries a link to the source page, the exact text we read the price from, and the date we checked it.

The number of generations needed for a route is the number of clips you want to keep divided by that route's keep rate, rounded up to a whole generation.

The cost of a route is the price of the cheapest plan whose monthly credits cover the workload, including top-up credits where the vendor sells them. Routes billed by the API are priced per second of output instead.

Routes are ranked by cost per kept clip only. Ties are broken alphabetically. Whether a vendor pays a commission on a link never changes where it sits in the ranking.

Pages are drafted with AI assistance. Every number shown is rendered from the dataset rather than typed by hand, and a human editor reviews and approves every page before it is published.

CostMath does not claim hands-on testing of a tool unless a dated test log exists for that claim.

Prices change. Each page shows the date its prices were last checked, and changes to the dataset are logged in the price-change log.