A paid dashboard/alert service tracking LLM API price changes and silent model-quality degradation across providers.
“Market-tested” means a real shipped product or experiment measured the failure directly (a live user count, a dead auction, a documented shutdown). “Predicted” means the verdict is an evidence-based forecast from the receipts below, not a direct measurement.
Recurring HN threads about silent model degradation and pricing churn through 2025-2026 — developers genuinely discuss the problem. What never appeared: anyone paying for tracking.
The market ran this experiment for you, for free: at least 5 open-source LLM-price-tracker repos launched within a six-month window — all sitting at 0 stars when checked. When even free versions of a product get zero adoption, the problem is not price; it is that the job is already done elsewhere. OpenRouter publishes live cross-provider pricing as a free byproduct of its business; Artificial Analysis publishes free benchmark and price tracking; providers announce changes directly. Degradation monitoring, the more interesting half, was absorbed by the LLM-observability gold rush (Langfuse, Helicone, and peers), which ships it inside free tiers. Developer audiences expect this category free, and the incumbents' business models let them supply it free forever.
Evidence of paid demand appearing despite the free supply — for example, compliance or procurement teams needing auditable model-change records that free tools will not warrant. Today even free trackers get no adoption; build nothing here until someone is observed paying someone.
We build data tools on the shelves that aren't dead — see the tools hub →