HotON.ai is built on transparent, verifiable data. This page explains exactly where our numbers come from, what is measured versus modeled, and how often everything updates.
Prices are real — pulled daily from the TestKey partner catalog and shown in US dollars per 1M tokens (input and output separately). We do not edit or estimate prices.
We track 1,000+ models across ~100 providers from the TestKey catalog — each with real pricing, context window, modality and a bilingual description. Quality scores are added from LMArena where a model is ranked.
Input and output modalities (text, image, audio, video, files) and context-window length come directly from each model's published metadata via TestKey.
Quality (Arena Elo) is real where a model is ranked on LMArena. Efficiency is a deterministic HotON composite of real price and context, and cost-per-task is derived from real prices. We do not publish speed or uptime figures — no public source covers every model in real time, so rather than estimate them we leave them out.
Every index is computed from the live model set: blended price means (global, China, US), an inference-cost proxy, an efficiency average and a multimodal-cost index. Values recompute daily and accumulate a genuine rolling time series.
News is aggregated from 20+ public RSS feeds of AI labs and reputable outlets. We store an original short summary with attribution and a link back to the source — we never republish full articles. Category and impact are inferred heuristically.
The AI tools directory is hand-curated by HotON.ai editorial. Names, makers, categories, pricing models and official links are public facts verified from official sources; HotON.ai is not affiliated with the listed products.
A daily cron refreshes prices and recomputes indexes (≈03:42) and ingests news (≈03:17). Pages use incremental static regeneration, so the public site reflects fresh data automatically.
HotON.ai provides market intelligence for information only — not financial advice. Always verify pricing and capabilities with the official provider before making decisions.