A classic move that never dies: lower the price, then make the billable unit more expensive. Sonnet 5 does it with a new tokenizer, while almost catching up with Opus.

The outdated documentation that used to confuse interns now confuses agents too, only at a higher price. When context has a cost, clarity stops being only a technical virtue and becomes a way to save money.

The cloud felt infinite until someone actually read the invoice: the AI industry is leaving the age of subsidies behind and entering the age of the token meter. The shift toward pay-as-you-go pricing exposes the real cost of artificial intelligence and reopens uncomfortable questions about sustainability, dependence, and productivity.