# MindsHub by MindsDB
> MindsHub gives everyone the freedom to choose among leading AI models and providers—whether they use AI to get work done or build it into products.
## Core pages
### AI access, usage, and spending, under control — MindsHub
URL: https://mindshub.ai/
#### What is MindsHub?
MindsHub brings AI model access, usage, and spending into one place. Use models through MindsHub Inference in your own apps and agents, or work with them in MindsHub Agents. The MindsHub Console provides shared controls for access, billing, and budgets.
#### What problem does MindsHub solve?
An AI experiment can keep running long after someone stops thinking about it. As more people, agents, and applications call models, the bill grows. Without a clear view of usage, it is hard to tell which work is useful, what is wasting money, or who owns it.
Stopping the spend can create another problem: revoking an API key that several applications share can also take down a service people depend on. Teams need to understand what is running and set appropriate access and spending rules before a surprise bill forces a rushed decision.
#### How does MindsHub work?
For model requests made through MindsHub Inference, the console brings permissions, model access, usage, and budgets together. It helps teams answer four practical questions:
- Who can do what? Create roles with the permissions people need, such as creating API keys or viewing billing, without giving everyone full administrator access.
- Which models can they use? Manage access by provider or individual model, with rules for a team or the whole organization.
- Where is the money going? Review daily spending by model, team, member, or API key, then inspect token usage and costs in the detailed breakdown.
- When should we step in? Set a budget for a team, choose the models and budget period, and track spending against its limit. The Alert only option warns at the limit while keeping requests running.
Use this view to investigate waste, review who has access, and decide where to adjust spending.
#### How can you use MindsHub?
Use MindsHub’s full model catalog through Inference, Cowork, or Code.
##### MindsHub Inference
Use MindsHub models in your favorite agents, or build your own apps.
Connect a third-party agent or your own application to the API. Access models through OpenAI Chat Completions or Anthropic Messages with one MindsHub API key.
[Explore Inference](https://mindshub.ai/unified-inference)
##### MindsHub Agents: Cowork
Give tasks to our agent workspace. Research, analyze, and create.
[Explore Cowork](https://mindshub.ai/agents?mode=cowork)
##### MindsHub Agents: Code
Build features, fix bugs, and review code with our Codex-based coding agent.
Cowork and Code are two modes of MindsHub Agents.
[Explore Code](https://mindshub.ai/agents?mode=code)
#### How do you get started?
Create a free account, then choose whether to connect an app or agent through the API or use MindsHub Agents. Compare the plans below and visit pricing for the full terms and model rates.
[Create free account](https://auth.mindshub.ai/auth/realms/mindsdb/protocol/openid-connect/registrations?client_id=public-client&response_type=code&scope=openid&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fconsole.mindshub.ai%2F)
##### Free
Always free, for knowledge work with agents.
$0 / month. No credit card required.
- The MindsHub Air model for non-coding work. Air uses a model selected for everyday knowledge work. The underlying model may change as better options become available.
- Use in our agents or yours
- Classify, route and score with Jev. Jev is TypeSafe’s decision model: it returns choices, scores and probabilities, not chat replies. Call it through the Decisions API as jev with your MindsHub API key.
- Daily limits under fair use. Free covers everyday work with agents, in MindsHub Agents or your own. For bulk automation or high-volume workloads, use pay as you go. [Read the fair-use policy](https://mindshub.ai/fair-use-policy)
[Create free account](https://auth.mindshub.ai/auth/realms/mindsdb/protocol/openid-connect/registrations?client_id=public-client&response_type=code&scope=openid&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fconsole.mindshub.ai%2F)
##### Pay as you go
Every model, billed at provider rates.
Per use at provider rates. Prepaid balance. No expiration or minimum spend.
Everything in Free, plus:
- Every model in the catalog
- Caching savings passed on to you. When you resend content the provider already has cached, such as a long system prompt, it bills at the model’s lower cached-input rate, where the provider offers one.
- No plan limits; pay per use
- Auto top-up with a monthly cap
- Usage and spend tracking
[Top up](https://auth.mindshub.ai/auth/realms/mindsdb/protocol/openid-connect/registrations?client_id=public-client&response_type=code&scope=openid&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fconsole.mindshub.ai%2F)
[See full pricing and model rates](https://mindshub.ai/pricing)
#### More information
[Models](https://mindshub.ai/models) · [Documentation](https://docs.mindshub.ai/inference/) · [Support](https://mindshub.ai/support) · [Privacy](https://mindshub.ai/privacy-policy) · [Terms](https://mindshub.ai/terms)
[Site index](https://mindshub.ai/llms.txt) · [Full site text](https://mindshub.ai/llms-full.txt)
### MindsHub Agents
URL: https://mindshub.ai/agents
MindsHub Agents is MindsHub’s agent workspace for delegating projects in plain language: research, analysis, content creation, and software development. It runs on Anton, an open-source agent harness; in Code mode, the coding agent is Codex. You can switch the model at any time, and switching does not remove your memory or artifacts. It runs in the browser and as a desktop app, and the MindsHub Air model is free to use in it with no credit card required, within the fair-use policy. See https://mindshub.ai/pricing#free-tier for details. MindsHub Agents uses the same catalog, account, and balance as MindsHub Inference.
Q: What is MindsHub Agents?
A: MindsHub Agents is an agent workspace for delegating projects in plain language. Connect the data and tools it needs, then review and share the documents, dashboards, apps, or reports it produces.
Q: Which agent powers MindsHub Agents?
A: MindsHub Agents runs on Anton, an open-source agent harness. In Code mode, the coding agent is Codex.
Q: Can I switch the model?
A: Yes. You can switch the model at any time, and switching does not remove your memory or artifacts.
Q: Do I need to pick a model to start?
A: No. MindsHub Agents provides defaults, so you can create an account and start a task without choosing a model or API key first.
Q: Can I build apps and write code with MindsHub Agents?
A: Yes. MindsHub Agents can make internal tools, calculators, small web apps, landing pages, and scripts. Supported artifacts can be published to a URL for others to use.
Q: Why isn't a chat box enough for an AI agent?
A: A chat stores a conversation. MindsHub Agents also connects data, organizes work into projects, saves reusable context, and publishes results.
Q: How does MindsHub Agents connect to my data?
A: Connect databases, warehouses, and SaaS tools through the connectors directory. Secrets stay in a vault and are scoped to the connection; the agent does not receive the raw key.
Q: Is there a desktop or mobile app?
A: MindsHub Agents runs in the browser at cowork.mindshub.ai and as a desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux (a .deb for Debian and Ubuntu). Mobile apps are planned.
Q: How do I get started?
A: Create an account in the browser or desktop app, then describe your first task. The MindsHub Air model is free within the fair-use policy and does not require a card.
Q: How does MindsHub Agents relate to MindsHub Inference?
A: MindsHub Inference is the API for developers building their own products. MindsHub Agents is a ready-to-use workspace built on the same catalog. One account and balance cover both.
### MindsHub Inference
URL: https://mindshub.ai/unified-inference
MindsHub Inference is the hosted API at api.mindshub.ai. It supports OpenAI Chat Completions and Anthropic Messages in production. The OpenAI Responses endpoint is still being upgraded, so the docs recommend Chat Completions for production use. OpenAI SDKs use https://api.mindshub.ai/v1 with api_key. Anthropic SDKs use https://api.mindshub.ai without /v1 and auth_token. Every model has a fixed alias that names one exact version, such as gpt-6-astra, and most lines also have a rotating alias, such as gpt or sonnet, that tracks the most recent version of its line; GET /v1/models lists the current catalog for your organization. Billing is pay as you go from one prepaid balance. The free tier includes the MindsHub Air model, alias mindshub_air, and TypeSafe’s Jev decision model, alias jev. Fair use and rate limits apply. Jev returns choices, scores and probabilities through POST /v1/decisions with a MindsHub API key. See https://mindshub.ai/unified-inference#jev and the runnable guide at https://docs.mindshub.ai/inference/decisions/. Input, output, cached input, and cache writes are metered separately. Unsupported or out-of-range parameters are reported in response headers when MindsHub drops or clamps them. MindsHub Agents uses the same catalog, account, and balance.
Q: Which API should I use?
A: Use Chat Completions for chat integrations and Messages for Anthropic SDKs or Claude Code. Use the Decisions endpoint for Jev. Responses is still being upgraded, so use Chat Completions for production chat integrations.
Q: Which base URL and auth field do I use?
A: OpenAI SDKs use https://api.mindshub.ai/v1 with api_key. Anthropic SDKs use https://api.mindshub.ai without /v1 and must use auth_token — not api_key — so the client sends the Authorization: Bearer header.
Q: How does billing work?
A: There is no subscription. The free tier includes the MindsHub Air model, alias mindshub_air, and TypeSafe’s Jev decision model, alias jev. Fair use and rate limits apply. Paid usage draws from a prepaid organization balance at the rates on the pricing page.
Q: Does conversation chaining work?
A: No. Keep conversation history client-side and send the full history on each turn. Prompt caching makes repeated prefixes cheaper on most models; previous_response_id and store are accepted but not honored.
Q: How do aliases and availability work?
A: Every model has a fixed alias that names one exact version, such as gpt-6-astra, and never moves. Most lines also have a rotating alias, such as gpt, sonnet, or kimi, that resolves to the most recent version of that line MindsHub serves, so it takes upgrades without a code change. Either string goes in the model field. GET /v1/models shows the live catalog and what your organization can use.
Q: Can I bring my own provider key?
A: Not today. Bring-your-own-key is planned, not available. The current service uses one MindsHub key and one organization wallet.
Q: How does this relate to MindsHub Agents?
A: MindsHub Agents provides a workspace that uses the same model catalog. MindsHub Inference is the API for your own software. They share one account and balance.
### Download
URL: https://mindshub.ai/download
MindsHub Agents has desktop installers for macOS and Windows, and a .deb for Debian and Ubuntu on 64-bit x86 and 64-bit ARM. It also runs in a browser at cowork.mindshub.ai, which works on ChromeOS, mobile, and other platforms without an installer. Mobile apps are planned. Create a free account, sign in, and describe your first task. The MindsHub Air model is free within the fair-use policy and does not require a provider API key.
### About
URL: https://mindshub.ai/about
Jorge Torres and Adam Carrigan released the first MindsDB code in Berkeley in 2018. Today, MindsHub works to make leading AI intelligence available without locking anyone into one model, provider, or closed platform. MindsHub Agents is an agent workspace for doing complex work with AI, from research and analysis to building software. MindsHub Inference provides one way to put intelligence into agents and products while remaining free to choose models and providers. Core agent technology is open source so people can inspect, adapt, and contribute to it. The company has more than 800 contributors, 39,000 GitHub stars, and more than $50 million in funding.
Q: What is MindsHub?
A: MindsHub gives everyone access to leading AI models without locking them into one model or provider. MindsHub Agents, an agent workspace, applies that choice to projects ranging from research and analysis to software development. MindsHub Inference brings it to agents and products built through an API.
Q: Is MindsHub the same as MindsDB?
A: MindsHub is the product; MindsDB is the company behind it. The product was renamed in 2026 because it had grown beyond databases. The company and team did not change.
Q: Is MindsHub open source?
A: Core MindsHub technology is open source, including Anton, the agent harness behind MindsHub Agents. We believe people should be able to inspect, adapt, and contribute to the systems they rely on.
Q: Who is MindsHub for?
A: MindsHub Agents is for anyone working on research, analysis, reporting, software development, and other complex projects. MindsHub Inference is for building AI into agents and products.
Q: Who builds MindsHub?
A: MindsHub is built by MindsDB, founded in 2018 in Berkeley by Jorge Torres and Adam Carrigan. MindsDB is backed by Benchmark, Mayfield, Y Combinator, and NVIDIA, with a global open-source community of 800+ contributors.
### Use cases
URL: https://mindshub.ai/use-cases
MindsHub Inference lets engineering teams change models without rewriting an integration. Use a short model alias in an OpenAI- or Anthropic-compatible request. MindsHub reports any parameters it drops or clamps in response headers. Tools and agents that accept a base URL can use the same key. SetFree configures Claude Code, Codex, and VS Code for tools that otherwise hide those settings. One organization balance and usage view covers API and agent traffic. Teams can run the same evaluation set across several models, compare cost per task, and use prompt caching to reduce the price of repeated context. Failover is configured per model and published on the pricing page.
Q: Do I have to change code to switch models?
A: No. Change the short model alias in the request body. Unsupported parameters are dropped and out-of-range values are clamped; response headers list every change.
Q: What happens if a model is unavailable?
A: Failover is set per model. The pricing page lists the fallback order where one exists; some models have no fallback.
Q: How do I point an agent at MindsHub?
A: Set the MindsHub base URL and API key in any agent that supports both. For Claude Code, Codex, and VS Code, the open-source SetFree tool adds the gateway configuration without forking the original tool. Gemini CLI and Aider adapters are not available yet.
Q: Does conversation state live on your side?
A: No. Keep history in your application and send it with each turn. Most models support prompt caching for repeated prefixes. previous_response_id and store are accepted but not honored.
Q: Will my streaming and tool-calling code keep working?
A: Yes. Chat Completions and Messages keep their native streaming events and error signals. Tools, image input, and web search work where the chosen model and request format support them.
Q: Can I bring my own provider key?
A: Not today. Bring-your-own-key is planned, not available: the current service uses one MindsHub key and one organization wallet. The workspace is the exception — MindsHub Agents lets you paste in provider keys and pay those providers directly.
### Consultation
URL: https://mindshub.ai/consultation
Book a free 30-minute working session with a MindsHub engineer. Use it to compare models on your evaluation set, review an integration, connect an agent, examine inference costs, or set up MindsHub Agents. Sessions are offered weekly and places are limited.
### Pricing
URL: https://mindshub.ai/pricing
MindsHub offers Free and Pay as you go. Free costs $0 a month with no credit card: the MindsHub Air model for non-coding work, in MindsHub Agents or your own agents, and TypeSafe’s Jev decision model, under daily limits and the fair-use policy at mindshub.ai/fair-use-policy. Jev is called through the Decisions API as the alias jev with your MindsHub API key, and returns choices, scores and probabilities rather than chat replies; see https://mindshub.ai/pricing#jev. Pay as you go bills every model in the catalog at provider rates from a prepaid balance with no expiration or minimum spend, passes on caching savings, offers auto top-up with a monthly cap, and tracks usage and spend. You can also bring your own provider API keys in MindsHub Agents and pay that provider directly. The rate card lists input, output, cache, long-prompt, web-search, page-fetch, and failover pricing for each model. MindsHub Agents and MindsHub Inference use the same balance and rates.
Q: What can I use for free?
A: MindsHub Air for research, analysis and other non-coding work. You also get Jev for classification, routing and scoring through the Decisions API. There’s no time limit or credit card required. Daily usage limits and the fair-use policy at mindshub.ai/fair-use-policy apply.
Q: Do I need a subscription to use paid models?
A: No. Top up your balance and pay for what you use, with no monthly fee or minimum spend. Your balance works in both MindsHub Agents and MindsHub Inference, the API.
Q: Does it cost more than going directly to the provider?
A: No. You pay the provider’s published model rates. When the provider offers a discount for cached input, we pass that saving on to you.
Q: Can I use my own API keys?
A: Yes. Add your provider keys in MindsHub Agents and pay that provider directly.
Q: How do I keep track of my spending?
A: Your account shows your usage and costs. You can top up manually or turn on auto top-up with a monthly cap on automatic top-ups.
Q: Do you offer discounts for higher usage?
A: Contact us at mindshub.ai/contact to discuss volume pricing.
### Model rankings
URL: https://mindshub.ai/models
The model board covers chat models currently available through MindsHub, one row per model. Each row shows the API alias that calls it, the fixed alias naming that exact version, or a branded alias such as the MindsHub Air model or MindsHub Blaze, and compares quality, time to first answer, output speed, and measured cost per task. Quality and task cost use published Artificial Analysis measurements where available; estimated values are marked. The board also lists context length, input types, licensing, reasoning settings, and suggested uses. MindsHub Air has its own row. MindsHub Blaze is a MindsHub model alias optimized for speed, served by Cerebras. We can change the model behind the alias. Its quality, SciCode and task-cost figures are reference benchmarks, not an independent Blaze evaluation or a forecast of your MindsHub bill. Its approximate speed is a Cerebras estimate, explained in the expanded row; first-answer latency is unverified. A separate table maps each rotating alias, such as gpt, to the most recent version of its line that it serves today, and to the fixed alias of that version. For cache rates, long-prompt tiers, web search, and failover pricing, use the rate card at mindshub.ai/pricing. The free-tier section at https://mindshub.ai/models#free-tier groups the MindsHub Air model and TypeSafe’s Jev decision model. Jev is included in the MindsHub free tier, subject to the fair-use policy. Use the alias jev through POST /v1/decisions for classification, routing and scoring. Jev is listed among the included models, with its API guide at https://mindshub.ai/models#jev; it has no chat-model benchmark ranking. The LLM comparison and cost-per-task articles cover the wider market, including Claude Haiku 5.5, the Mistral Large 4 preview, GPT-6.1 Sol, Claude Sonnet 5.5, GPT-6 Sol and Luna, Claude Opus 5.5, Gemini 4 Argon, Grok 4.7, MiMo-V2.6-Pro and MiMo-V2.6-Flash. Their presence in an article does not imply availability in the MindsHub catalog.
Q: Which model should I use?
A: Use the task recommendations on the board. Current picks include GPT-6.1 Sol or Claude Opus 5.5 for agentic coding, Claude Opus 5.5 for hard reasoning, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash or Gemini 3.7 Flash for interactive work, and GLM-5.3 or Kimi K3 when you need open weights. Start with MindsHub Air if you do not yet have a strong preference.
Q: Which models does this page cover?
A: Every model currently in the MindsHub catalog, and only those models, one row per model. Each row includes the alias that calls it: the fixed alias for that exact version, or the branded alias for MindsHub Air and MindsHub Blaze.
Q: What is a rotating alias?
A: A rotating alias such as gpt or sonnet always resolves to the most recent version of that line MindsHub serves, so it can change without a code change on your side. Versioned model lines also have a fixed alias that names one exact version. Branded aliases such as MindsHub Air and MindsHub Blaze have no fixed counterpart. The rotating aliases table on the board maps each rotating alias to the model it serves today and to that fixed alias.
Q: Why rank on cost per task instead of price per token?
A: Models use different numbers of tokens and reasoning steps to finish the same task. Cost per task captures that difference. Use it to compare candidates, not as a forecast of your own bill.
Q: Where do these benchmark numbers come from?
A: Quality and task cost come from Artificial Analysis at each model's highest reasoning setting. A “≈” marks a reference value or estimate. Coding is the published SciCode percentage. Latency is the median wait for the first answer token, including reasoning; speed is median output throughput except for provider estimates explained in expanded rows, as on MindsHub Blaze. These source-endpoint measurements do not measure MindsHub latency, and prices come from the live MindsHub catalog.
Q: At what reasoning effort were these numbers measured?
A: Artificial Analysis figures use each model's highest setting. MindsHub often sends a lower default, shown when you expand a row, so actual cost may be lower. MindsHub does not publish its own per-setting scores.
Q: Does this page replace the pricing page?
A: No. The board shows input and output token prices for comparison. Use the pricing page for cache rates, long-prompt tiers, web search, failover order, and billing details.
### MindsHub vs MindsDB
URL: https://mindshub.ai/mindshub-vs-mindsdb
MindsDB began in 2018 as a way to run machine-learning models where data already lived. The product later added documents, vector search, knowledge bases, and federated queries. By 2025, the team was also building a workspace for agents that plan, use tools, run code, and produce files. In 2026, that broader product became MindsHub because the DB suffix no longer described it clearly. MindsDB remains the company. Its original query engine remains available on GitHub and is maintained by the community. The team did not change.
Q: Did the company change hands or pivot?
A: No. MindsHub is the product name; MindsDB remains the company behind it. The team and ownership did not change.
Q: Is the MindsDB query engine going away?
A: The original query engine remains available on GitHub and is maintained by the community. It is not one of the products MindsHub is building today.
Q: Do old mindsdb.com URLs still work?
A: Yes. Every path on mindsdb.com 301-redirects to the matching path on mindshub.ai. The redirect is in place indefinitely.
Q: What does this change for existing MindsDB users?
A: Nothing about your existing workloads needs to move. The open-source MindsDB project continues. If you want to delegate whole projects to open-source models and agents, that now lives under the new MindsHub surface.
Q: Why was the old name confusing?
A: The DB suffix fit the original database-centered product. It became misleading after the product added documents, vector search, model routing, and agent workflows.
### MindsDB Query Engine
URL: https://mindshub.ai/mindsdb-query-engine
The original MindsDB product is an open-source, self-hosted query engine. Register more than 200 databases, warehouses, SaaS apps, file stores, and vector databases, then query them through SQL. Knowledge Bases make documents and other unstructured sources queryable. Jobs and Triggers schedule updates or respond to data changes. The project remains available on GitHub and is maintained by the community. MindsHub now focuses on MindsHub Agents and MindsHub Inference.
Q: What is MindsDB Query Engine?
A: It is an open-source SQL query engine for more than 200 databases, warehouses, SaaS apps, document stores, and vector databases. It also provides Knowledge Bases, Jobs, and Triggers.
Q: Is MindsDB still maintained?
A: Yes. The community maintains the standalone project at github.com/mindsdb/engine.
Q: How is MindsDB different from MindsHub?
A: MindsDB is a self-hosted data engine that you configure and query with SQL. MindsHub provides MindsHub Inference, a hosted model API, and MindsHub Agents, an agent workspace. MindsDB and MindsHub are separate products from the same team.
Q: How does the query engine compare to a traditional database?
A: MindsDB does not store the source data. It provides a SQL layer across systems you already run and uses each source's native protocol.
Q: How do AI agents use MindsDB?
A: Agents connect through SQL or the Model Context Protocol and query connected sources with SELECT statements. MindsDB sends each query to the appropriate source handler.
Q: How do Knowledge Bases work?
A: A CREATE statement defines the embedding model and metadata columns. MindsDB handles chunking, vectorization, storage, and updates. Query content semantically and filter it with structured metadata.
Q: Can I self-host MindsDB?
A: Yes. MindsDB runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, and Docker. The source is at github.com/mindsdb/engine.
Q: Which AI models does MindsDB support?
A: MindsDB is model-neutral. You can plug in Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Hugging Face, or any self-hosted endpoint — both for embeddings inside Knowledge Bases and for LLM-backed queries. Switching providers is a configuration change, not a rewrite.
Q: Where can I find the documentation?
A: Docs are at mindsdb.github.io/engine. Source is at github.com/mindsdb/engine. For the hosted product, see mindshub.ai or read /mindshub-vs-mindsdb for the rebrand story.
### Press Kit
URL: https://mindshub.ai/press-kit
MindsHub believes the best intelligence should be open to everyone. It gives everyone the freedom to choose among models and providers instead of being locked into one ecosystem. Two products put that mission into practice. MindsHub Agents is an agent workspace for completing knowledge work and developing software with open-source agent harnesses, and a choice of models. MindsHub Inference provides one API for building intelligence into agents and products while keeping the model and provider open to change. MindsHub is built by MindsDB, founded in Berkeley in 2018. Its original query engine remains on GitHub and is maintained by the community. The press kit includes SVG and PNG logos, color values, and typography guidance. Use Inter for headings and body copy, and JetBrains Mono for code and metadata. Write in plain, specific language and avoid hype. One-liner: “MindsHub gives everyone the freedom to choose among leading AI models and providers—whether they use AI to get work done or build it into products.” Boilerplate: “MindsHub is building an open foundation for working and building with AI, giving everyone the freedom to choose models and providers without being locked into one ecosystem. Its agent workspace, MindsHub Agents, supports research, analysis, content creation, and software development, with open-source agent harnesses, and a choice of models. MindsHub Inference provides that same freedom when building agents and products, with one set of controls and one bill. MindsHub is built by MindsDB, founded in Berkeley in 2018 and backed by Benchmark, Mayfield, Y Combinator, and NVIDIA.” Press inquiries: see the contact details on the press-kit page, or use the form at /contact.
### Careers
URL: https://mindshub.ai/careers
MindsDB is a remote-first team building MindsHub and open-source AI tools. Roles span engineering, product, design, marketing, and customer work. Benefits include unlimited PTO, health coverage or regional equivalents, mental-health support, wellbeing and development budgets, a home-office budget, company off-sites, and flexible schedules. Teams work asynchronously and write decisions down. Current openings are on the careers page.
### Support
URL: https://mindshub.ai/support
The MindsHub Discord at mindshub.ai/discord is open to everyone. Use it for questions, use-case advice, ideas, feature discussion, and anything open source. Use the private form at mindshub.ai/support when you need help with a specific issue or do not want to post the details publicly. Include what happened, what you expected, steps to reproduce it, the exact error, and the model in use. Commercial customers can check the Support Policy for priorities and target response times. Send sales and partnership questions through /contact, and open-source bugs through github.com/mindsdb.
Q: What can I ask about in Discord?
A: Ask the team and community about setup, use cases, features, ideas, models, agent harnesses, connectors, and open-source work.
Q: How do I open a support ticket?
A: Submit the form at mindshub.ai/support when you need help with a specific issue or prefer not to post the details publicly.
Q: What should I include in a support ticket?
A: Say what happened, what you expected, who is affected, when it started, how to reproduce it, the exact error, and the model in use.
Q: Is there a guaranteed response time?
A: Target response times and priority levels apply to customers with a commercial agreement and are set out in the Support Policy at mindshub.ai/support-policy.
### Contact
URL: https://mindshub.ai/contact
Use the contact form for demos, pricing, commercial support, partnerships, or general questions. MindsHub works remotely and keeps mailing addresses in San Jose and London. Use /support for product help, github.com/mindsdb for open-source work, and /careers for jobs.
## Blog
### A quicker way to check whether an agent finished
URL: https://mindshub.ai/blog/jev-agent-completion-checks — 2026-09-29
Updated: 2026-10-08
Inside MindsHub Agents: how we use completion checks to catch unfinished work, and where Jev could make those decisions faster with an LLM fallback.
In one of our test conversations, a user asks an agent to check last month's AWS spend. The lookup fails with a rate-limit error. The agent replies anyway:
> “Last month's AWS bill came out at $214,462.28.”
There is no evidence for that number anywhere in the conversation. The reply looks finished. The task isn't.
This is the kind of failure we need to catch in Anton, the open-source agent harness behind MindsHub Agents. Anton reads files, runs code, searches the web, and writes answers. Sometimes it stops after doing only part of the work. Sometimes a tool fails, and it responds as if it had succeeded.
We use a second, cheaper LLM to check whether Anton has finished. We wanted to find out whether a decision model could do that job faster and at a lower cost. So we tested [TypeSafe's Jev](https://docs.typesafe.ai/introduction) against our existing check on 990 generated conversations.
## Defining finished work
Every Anton task that uses a tool ends with a completion check. The checker reads a compact view of the conversation and chooses what should happen next:
* `COMPLETE`: the work is done, so Anton ends the task.
* `WAITING`: Anton needs something from the user, so it ends the current run and waits. We also use this label for refusals of unsafe requests.
* `INCOMPLETE`: Anton stopped early but can continue. We send it back to work with a note about what is missing.
* `STUCK`: a blocker prevents further progress. Anton explains the blocker and stops.
Those distinctions matter. A successful query that finds nothing can be complete. A refusal ends the interaction without satisfying the original request. An agent that gives up after one failed lookup may still have another way to get the answer.
Jev looked like a reasonable fit for this part of the system. It returns structured decisions and probabilities. We could give it our four labels and the rules for choosing between them.
## Making the test harder to pass
We needed conversations with known expected labels and no customer data. We wrote a generator with 17 scenario recipes, varying the requests, tools, errors, and wording across 16 data sources. It covered finished work, partial answers, empty query results, refusals, and failures like the unsupported AWS bill.
The team reviewed the set before we relied on it. We also had a second model review 37 cases from an earlier version. It used the same rules but couldn't see our labels. It agreed with every label. It also flagged 15 cases as too easy.
Some replies repeated the checker's own rules. Others practically announced that the work was unfinished. Many cases differed mainly in their numbers: once we masked those numbers, 1,000 examples became about 340 distinct conversations.
We rewrote the generator. It now rejects replies that echo the rules and repeated request-and-reply pairs within a recipe. Tool results identify their sources. Access requests appear only for private sources, and missing-library errors are more realistic.
The revised set contained 990 distinct examples. They still came from 17 recipes, so this was a test of known situations, with more difficult and unfinished tasks than everyday traffic. It wasn't a substitute for evaluating real conversations.
## A faster check with some telling mistakes
We ran every case once through each model, for 1,980 judgments. The existing checker used the MindsHub Air model (`mindshub_air`), through Anton's production code path, including its forced tool call and output budgets. Jev received a four-way Choice using the same production rules, plus a Noul question for the check's extra yes/no field.
Both received the same transcript through the production MindsHub gateway from the same client. Prompts were about 1,700 tokens, compared with roughly 2,700 in production. Timings included the gateway and network. We scored the completion labels; we didn't evaluate the LLM's written explanations or the extra yes/no field.
| Measure | Current LLM check | Jev |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Accepted completion label | 976 / 990 (98.6%) | 982 / 990 (99.2%) |
| Unsupported numbers labeled `COMPLETE` | 0 / 160 | 0 / 160 |
| Wrong continue-or-stop action | 5 / 830 | 0 / 830 |
| Median response time | 2.56 s | 0.78 s |
| 95th-percentile response time | 3.85 s | 0.95 s |
| Cost per 1,000 checks | about $0.40 | about $0.07 |
Jev's median response was about three times faster, at roughly one-sixth of the cost per check. These are single-call costs, before fallbacks, calculated using the list prices when we ran the benchmark: $0.20 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens for `mindshub_air`; $0.042 per million input tokens with free output for Jev. Air's published rates have since fallen to $0.10 and $0.50.
Both models rejected all 160 unsupported-number cases. For those cases, our rules accepted either `INCOMPLETE` or `STUCK`. They tested whether the checker rejected an unsupported answer, without fixing whether continuing or stopping was right.
The remaining 830 cases specified a single continue-or-stop action. Jev got that action right every time in this run. Its eight label errors all swapped one stopping label for another: six requests for user input became `STUCK`, and two refusals became `COMPLETE`. Those errors could still affect what the user sees.
The existing LLM made nine similar swaps between stopping labels. Its other five errors changed the action: three finished answers were sent back to work, one premature stop was accepted, and one hard blocker prompted another attempt.
That was encouraging, but it left a practical problem. When Anton needs to continue, it needs a note explaining what is missing. When it is stuck, it needs an explanation for the user. Jev doesn't write those explanations.
## A shortcut for clearly finished work
We could still use Jev to recognize clearly complete tasks and leave the other cases with the existing checker.
To explore that, we looked at the probability Jev assigned to `COMPLETE`. Its separate [confidence field](https://docs.typesafe.ai/confidence) describes the shape of the probability distribution; it isn't a measured success rate on our task.
At a `COMPLETE` probability of 0.80 or higher, Jev selected 306 cases. All 306 were correctly classified as complete. That covered 306 of the 310 finished tasks, about 99%. The two refusals it had labeled `COMPLETE` didn't reach this threshold.
That suggests a useful shortcut. It doesn't establish a production threshold. The uncertain cases included refusals and successful queries that found nothing, both of which need to appear in the next evaluation.
Our proposed rollout would work like this:
1. Start in shadow mode. After our data-processing review, run Jev alongside the current check and record its decisions. Keep the existing check in control while we review real traffic.
2. Choose the threshold on human-labeled conversations. Confirm it on a separate set that wasn't used to choose it.
3. Enable the `COMPLETE` shortcut only after validation. Let qualifying completions end the task. Send everything else, including Jev errors and timeouts, to the existing LLM check.
We would also need to preserve the check's extra yes/no behavior, which this benchmark didn't evaluate. Giving `WAITING` its own shortcut would require separate validation.
## The savings depend on the fallback
The tempting number is the difference between $0.40 and $0.07 per 1,000 checks. But a system that calls Jev first pays for Jev on every case, and for the LLM whenever it falls back.
Our 306 qualifying completions were only 31% of the test set. At the rates we tested with, and with the remaining cases going to the LLM, the estimated cost would be about $0.35 per 1,000 checks. That's a saving of roughly 13%.
Production has a different mix. Over two weeks in September, 73% of customer completion checks came back `COMPLETE` on the builds most customers were running. A newer release with stricter rules showed 60%, though on far fewer checks.
If the threshold caught about 99% of real finished tasks as it did in the generated set, roughly 59% to 72% of checks could skip the LLM. At the tested rates, that would put the estimated cost saving at about 40% to 55%. At Air's current rates, and assuming the same token counts, the LLM side of each estimate costs at most half as much. That would put this projection below 40%, and on the test-set mix above, the shortcut would no longer save anything. Those are projections for completion checks, not measured production savings or reductions in the cost of the whole agent run.
Latency needs a separate measurement. A shortcut case avoids the LLM call; a fallback case waits for both calls in sequence. Running them in parallel avoids the extra fallback wait but pays for both every time.
And Anton's answer is already visible when this check runs. A faster check can help the agent finish or resume sooner. It won't make the first answer appear sooner.
## What other agent builders can use
Start with the decision your code needs to make and the action each label triggers. Include cases where a confident answer has no evidence, where a successful query returns nothing, and where the agent needs the user to respond. Review the test data for clues that make the answer too easy.
Then look for a narrow decision you can validate independently. For Anton, that is recognizing clearly finished work while keeping the existing checker available for everything else. Measure how often the shortcut applies, what happens when it fails, and the cost and latency of the combined system.
Jev gave us a reason to test that design on real traffic. The next step is to find out whether it can recognize finished work just as reliably in long, messy conversations, where the rules are harder to apply and an unsupported answer may look perfectly reasonable.
### Jev is live on MindsHub Inference. Here’s how we’re testing it inside MindsHub Agents.
URL: https://mindshub.ai/blog/jev-decision-model-agent-routing — 2026-09-24
Updated: 2026-10-08
We ran Jev, TypeSafe’s decision model, beside the MindsHub Agents router: 300 runs, decisions about 2.5 times faster on agent-bound requests, one repeated miss.
Jev, TypeSafe’s decision model, is now available through [MindsHub Inference](https://docs.mindshub.ai/inference/decision-models/).
After adding support, we asked the obvious follow-up: where would we use it ourselves?
We started with a decision MindsHub Agents makes on every message: can it answer directly, or does it need tools?
Across 300 test runs (30 hand-written prompts, each run ten times), Jev decided about 2.5 times faster than our router on agent-bound requests, never timed out, and was right on every call where it chose the agent. Accuracy was otherwise comparable: it disagreed with our router on one prompt, consistently, and both broke our own routing rule on two others. That makes Jev a credible shortcut for starting agent work sooner, not yet a proven routing upgrade.
## Why routing matters
A direct answer takes one model call. A request that needs tools starts an isolated environment where the agent can browse, run code and create files.
“What does HTTP 429 mean?” can be answered directly. “Search the web for our latest announcement and turn it into a one-page PDF” needs the agent. The router is a single model call. It decides the route, and on direct requests, the same call writes the answer. Jev classifies only, so it can run ahead of the router rather than replace it.
Choosing the wrong path has a cost. Starting an agent unnecessarily makes a simple answer slower and more expensive. Answering directly when a request needs live information or a file can leave the task incomplete or produce an unsupported answer.
## Testing alongside our existing router
Jev is running in shadow mode: it makes its own decision, but the existing router still controls what happens. MindsHub Agents does not wait for the shadow result before proceeding.
We ask Jev to choose between `answer_directly` and `needs_agent`, using our routing rules. Those rules cover requests for tools, files, current information, calculations and multi-step plans. Questions about MindsHub Agents or the assistant’s runtime also go to the agent. The exact abbreviated prompt is in the appendix.
We tested straightforward questions and harder cases, repeating each prompt ten times in shuffled order. Repetition helped distinguish recurring mistakes from results that changed between runs. These are synthetic tests, not a representative sample of customer conversations. The comparison isn’t fully even: the router’s prompt has been tuned over weeks while Jev’s criteria were written in a day, router timeouts count as correct when the agent fallback happens to be right, and we tested against a single router model, the MindsHub Air model, our free default.
## Faster decisions, comparable routing
Across the 136 runs where both systems chose the agent and the router returned a decision, the median time was about 1.5 seconds for the router and 0.6 seconds for Jev.

That is a promising gap before agent work starts. It is not yet a measured reduction in users’ waiting time. On direct requests, the router also writes the answer, so comparing its full response time with Jev’s classification time would be misleading.
We scored routes against labels assigned before testing. Router timeouts fall back to the agent; the table counts that as a match when the expected route is agent.
| Test set | Existing router, including fallback | Jev |
| :-- | :-- | :-- |
| Straightforward questions | 196/200 | 190/200 |
| Harder questions | 83/100 | 81/100 |
| **Total matching expected routes** | **279/300** | **271/300** |
The router’s total includes 24 timeouts that fell back to the agent and matched by default. Outside the two disputed rows, both systems were about 97% right (275/280 and 270/280). Jev’s ten misses outside those rows are all on the spreadsheet prompt; the router’s five are spread across four prompts.
The repeated examples explain more than the totals:
- **The spreadsheet request exposed a consistent Jev mistake.** It chose a direct answer in all ten runs, even though the user requested a spreadsheet. The router chose the agent every time.
- **Compound interest exposed router variability.** Jev chose the expected agent route every time. The router answered directly twice, chose the agent three times and timed out five times.
- **Some harder questions exposed ambiguity in our rules.** Our policy sends even simple calculations to the agent. The router answered the seconds-in-a-week question directly every time; Jev did so in nine of ten runs. The quicksort question was also disputed because “today’s data” could mean a general question or a request to inspect a dataset.
Confidence helped identify some uncertain cases, but it was not a guarantee. Jev’s median confidence on the spreadsheet was 0.60. On the disputed quicksort question, it consistently chose direct with a median confidence of 1.00. We cannot choose a reliable threshold from those examples alone. The next step is to sweep a cutoff on Jev’s returned probability against a few hundred independently labeled conversations, with a held-out set to check it.
## What could this change in MindsHub Agents?
The approach we want to test is a shortcut: when Jev confidently identifies a request that needs tools, start the agent sooner. In these runs, all 161 of Jev’s `needs_agent` decisions matched the expected route, so the shortcut would not have started a single unnecessary sandbox.
That distinction matters. Jev’s spreadsheet mistake would still pass through the router, which caught it in this experiment. But if Jev mistakenly sent a simple question straight to the agent, it could create an unnecessary sandbox run. We need to evaluate the combined system, not just the two classifiers separately.
Running Jev first would add about 0.6 seconds before requests that still need the router. Running both concurrently could avoid that sequential delay, but their actual latency and billing effects need to be measured.
Cost is another reason to investigate. Using token counts and the tested rates in the Cost section below, a million Jev calls would cost about $24, compared with about $128 for router delegation calls (about $59 at Air's current rates, assuming the same token counts). A direct router answer would cost more, but it also produces the response that Jev cannot write.
Avoiding an unnecessary agent task may matter more than the classifier’s bill. One PDF task’s recorded usage, valued at our assumed model rates, came to about $0.0066 before sandbox compute. That is an illustration from one task, not a typical agent cost.
## What we learned
- Jev was about 2.5 times faster than the router on agent-bound requests (0.6 seconds vs. 1.5), and the gap held across all 30 prompts.
- Jev returned a classification on all 300 runs. The router timed out on 25, each time spending its full 2-second budget before falling back to the agent.
- All 161 of Jev’s `needs_agent` decisions matched the expected route. The proposed shortcut acts only on those, so on this set it would not have started a single unnecessary agent session.
- Jev’s one mistake was systematic: the same prompt, all ten runs, at its lowest confidence outside the two disputed rows. The router’s mistakes varied from run to run on the same prompt.
- Outside the two rows where our own policy is disputed, accuracy was comparable: 275/280 for the router and 270/280 for Jev.
Speed alone is not enough. The router matched slightly more expected routes, Jev repeated one clear mistake consistently, and some disagreements revealed ambiguity in our routing policy. We’re keeping Jev in shadow mode while we test the proposed shortcut on representative conversations with independently reviewed labels. The next question is whether it reduces waiting without starting unnecessary agent sessions. That is the result we need before changing how MindsHub Agents routes requests.
## Methods and limitations
We tested 30 handwritten prompts, 20 straightforward and 10 harder, 10 times each, for 300 turns. Requests ran in shuffled order, two seconds apart, each in a fresh conversation. This test repeated behavior on a small set of prompts; it does not provide 300 different scenarios or test normal conversation history.
Expected labels were assigned by the author before testing and were not independently reviewed. Two harder labels are disputed, and one follow-up prompt is artificial without prior conversation. Scores describe agreement with these labels, not independently established answer quality.
The router used `mindshub_air`; Jev reported model version `jev-1.13.0`. Both timers ran server-side inside MindsHub Agents. Router timings include answer generation on direct turns; Jev timings include a new connection, our inference gateway, and the provider request. We did not control caching or verify the reuse of router connections. Router timeouts are excluded from its timing summaries but included in routing outcomes through the fallback. The confidence figures below are medians, not probabilities of being correct. These runs logged only confidence; the probe now logs the probability distribution as well.
### Cost
Router costs use the MindsHub Air model’s published rates at the time of testing: $0.20 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens. Those rates have since fallen to $0.10 and $0.50. Jev has no MindsHub list rate; the table values it at the rate used in the test, about $0.04 per million input tokens. Both models are in the MindsHub [free tier](/pricing#free-tier), so within the [fair-use policy](/fair-use-policy) neither call is billed to MindsHub users.
| Call | Measured tokens (median) | Cost per call | Per million calls |
| :-- | :-- | :-- | :-- |
| Router, deciding to delegate | 344 in, 49 out | $0.000128 | about $128 |
| Router, writing a direct answer | 343 in, 155 out | $0.000255 | about $255 |
| Jev | 570 in, no output charge | $0.000024 | about $24 |
## Appendix: full results
Each row summarizes ten runs. “Matches / timeouts” reports the number of final routes matching the expected label, followed by the number of router timeouts. Timeouts fall back to the agent and can therefore count as matches. Router times exclude timeouts and include answer writing when it replies directly. All times below are milliseconds; confidence is the median across runs. Prompts are quoted as sent, so some say Cowork, the name of the MindsHub Agents workspace mode.
### Straightforward questions
| # | Prompt | Expected | Router: matches / timeouts | Router ms: median (range) | Jev: matches, confidence | Jev ms: median (range) |
| :-- | :-- | :-- | :-- | :-- | :-- | :-- |
| 1 | What's the difference between a list and a tuple in Python? | direct | 10/10, 0 | 2860 (2627–3481) | 10/10, 1.00 | 608 (523–990) |
| 2 | Explain what a race condition is in concurrent programming. | direct | 10/10, 0 | 2984 (2644–3485) | 10/10, 1.00 | 594 (544–728) |
| 3 | What does HTTP status code 429 mean? | direct | 10/10, 0 | 2167 (1876–3346) | 10/10, 1.00 | 576 (530–634) |
| 4 | Summarize the CAP theorem in two sentences. | direct | 9/10, 1 | 1997 (1718–2320) | 10/10, 1.00 | 602 (530–673) |
| 5 | What's the time complexity of binary search? | direct | 10/10, 0 | 2192 (1616–2732) | 10/10, 1.00 | 594 (535–684) |
| 6 | What's the difference between TCP and UDP? | direct | 10/10, 0 | 3048 (2592–5358) | 10/10, 1.00 | 626 (570–1092) |
| 7 | Explain what idempotency means in the context of an API. | direct | 10/10, 0 | 3358 (2745–5013) | 10/10, 1.00 | 623 (550–1069) |
| 8 | What is a deadlock in operating systems? | direct | 10/10, 0 | 2872 (2611–5508) | 10/10, 1.00 | 613 (553–1083) |
| 9 | What's the difference between a process and a thread? | direct | 10/10, 0 | 3204 (3092–3731) | 10/10, 1.00 | 592 (556–670) |
| 10 | Explain the difference between authentication and authorization. | direct | 10/10, 0 | 2076 (1977–2502) | 10/10, 1.00 | 581 (536–819) |
| 11 | What's the current price of Bitcoin in USD? | agent | 10/10, 1 | 1486 (1042–1702) | 10/10, 1.00 | 590 (527–1048) |
| 12 | Search the web for MindsDB's latest product announcement and summarize it in three bullet points. | agent | 10/10, 1 | 1465 (1092–1932) | 10/10, 1.00 | 606 (561–1134) |
| 13 | Create a one-page PDF summary of the benefits of vector databases. | agent | 10/10, 0 | 1573 (1214–1895) | 10/10, 0.72 | 594 (548–675) |
| 14 | Calculate the compound interest on $10,000 at 5% annually for 7 years. | agent | 8/10, 5 | 1567 (1256–2462) | 10/10, 0.78 | 594 (539–922) |
| 15 | What's tomorrow's weather forecast for San Francisco? | agent | 10/10, 0 | 1515 (1166–1637) | 10/10, 1.00 | 606 (551–668) |
| 16 | What's 847293 divided by 37, rounded to two decimal places? | agent | 9/10, 0 | 1679 (1311–2106) | 10/10, 0.75 | 579 (538–637) |
| 17 | Search the web for today's top tech news headline. | agent | 10/10, 4 | 1456 (1174–1932) | 10/10, 1.00 | 610 (530–718) |
| 18 | What's my current account balance? | agent | 10/10, 0 | 1552 (1281–1627) | 10/10, 1.00 | 588 (547–642) |
| 19 | How many unread emails do I have right now? | agent | 10/10, 0 | 1522 (1151–1746) | 10/10, 1.00 | 586 (490–710) |
| 20 | Create a spreadsheet listing the prime numbers between 1 and 100. | agent | 10/10, 0 | 1436 (1212–1986) | 0/10, 0.60 | 600 (527–689) |
The router matched 196/200 expected routes, including 11 correct timeout fallbacks. It timed out 12 times; the CAP theorem timeout produced the one incorrect agent fallback. It gave three incorrect direct answers. Jev matched 190/200 routes, with all ten errors on the spreadsheet prompt. The two systems agreed on 175 of the 188 runs where the router returned a decision.
In the 76 runs where both chose agent and the router returned a decision, the reported median timings were 1.52 seconds for the router (range 1.04–1.93) and 0.60 seconds for Jev (0.49–1.13).
### Harder questions
| # | Prompt | Expected | Router: matches / timeouts | Router ms: median (range) | Jev: matches, confidence | Jev ms: median (range) |
| :-- | :-- | :-- | :-- | :-- | :-- | :-- |
| 1 | Are you GPT-4, or a different model? | agent | 10/10, 2 | 1556 (1181–1739) | 10/10, 0.97 | 595 (528–1464) |
| 2 | Does Cowork support connecting to Slack? | agent | 10/10, 0 | 1430 (1331–1878) | 10/10, 0.96 | 593 (543–649) |
| 3 | What's the latest stable release of PostgreSQL? | agent | 10/10, 2 | 1482 (1235–1565) | 10/10, 0.93 | 568 (512–1071) |
| 4 | Roughly how many seconds are in a week? | agent by policy, disputed | 0/10, 0 | 1631 (1248–2104) | 1/10, 0.05 | 609 (521–660) |
| 5 | Explain what a hash table is, and check if this repo has one in its data structures folder. | agent | 10/10, 0 | 1490 (1117–1831) | 10/10, 0.96 | 616 (540–667) |
| 6 | If I were to reverse a linked list of length n, would that take O(n) or O(n log n)? | direct | 10/10, 0 | 2060 (1464–2556) | 10/10, 1.00 | 609 (539–640) |
| 7 | Can Cowork read files from my Google Drive, and what's the size limit per file? | agent | 10/10, 1 | 1510 (1361–1761) | 10/10, 0.93 | 583 (555–974) |
| 8 | Following up on what we discussed, is that still accurate today? | agent, ambiguous; artificial, since a fresh conversation has no prior context | 9/10, 2 | 1776 (1557–2222) | 10/10, 0.92 | 589 (533–669) |
| 9 | What is Cowork's pricing, roughly, for a small team? | agent | 10/10, 2 | 1530 (1062–1908) | 10/10, 1.00 | 580 (523–1037) |
| 10 | Is quicksort's worst case O(n^2) or O(n log n), and would that change if I ran it on today's data? | agent by policy, disputed | 4/10, 4 | 3206 (2934–3662) | 0/10, 1.00 | 606 (540–736) |
The router matched 83/100 expected routes, including 13 correct timeout fallbacks; Jev matched 81/100. The router’s 17 direct-route mismatches occurred on the seconds-in-a-week question (ten), quicksort (six), and the context-free follow-up (one). Jev’s 19 occurred on seconds in a week (nine) and quicksort (ten). The two systems agreed on 85 of the 87 runs where the router returned a decision.
The seconds-in-a-week label follows the calculation rule literally. The quicksort label assumes the user wants data inspected, an interpretation that needs review. The follow-up has no prior conversation to refer to. These annotations should be resolved before using the test set to select a production threshold.
### Routing question
This is the abbreviated question used in the article. The full configuration also sends questions about MindsHub Agents and the assistant’s runtime to the agent.
```python
_ROUTE_QUESTION = {
"type": "choice",
"instructions": (
"Classify what is required to produce the assistant's next reply. "
"Return exactly one of: answer_directly or needs_agent. Classify as "
"needs_agent if any condition listed for it applies; otherwise "
"classify as answer_directly. When uncertain, choose needs_agent."
),
"criteria": {
"answer_directly": (
"The reply can be produced solely from text already in the "
"conversation and stable general knowledge."
),
"needs_agent": (
"The reply requires any tool use: browsing or external retrieval; "
"access to an attachment, file, account, or dataset; executing or "
"testing code; verifying potentially time-sensitive information; "
"a calculation; or a multi-step plan."
),
},
}
```
### LLM Cost per Task: Are Cheap Models Really Cheap?
URL: https://mindshub.ai/blog/llm-cost-per-task-vs-price-per-token — 2026-09-23
Updated: 2026-10-08
Compare measured LLM task costs, including Haiku 5.5, Sonnet 5.5 and GPT-6.1 Sol. See why a low token rate alone cannot tell you a job's cost.
A lower token price looks like an easy saving. It stays a saving only if the model can finish the work without spending the difference on extra reasoning and retries.
The bill depends on the whole attempt: how much context the model reads, how long it reasons, which tools it calls, and whether you have to run the job again. A rate card gives you the price of each token. It cannot tell you how many the job will need.
Take Qwen3.8-Max (0902) and the previous-generation GPT-5.6 Sol. Their output rates are $6 and $20 per million tokens, though Sol's $20 is a [promotional rate OpenAI lists](https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/pricing) through at least November 21, 2026. On Artificial Analysis's current benchmark, however, Qwen costs $5.41 per task and Sol at max effort costs $1.99. At today's prices, Qwen's output rate is 70% lower, while its measured task cost is 172% higher.

The point is to measure how a model works through the job. Some low-price models retain a substantial cost advantage. Others consume enough tokens to lose it.
## What cost per task measures
[Artificial Analysis](https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/deepseek-v4-1-flash) calculates a weighted average cost across its Intelligence Index evaluations. For each evaluation, it accounts for input, cache reads and writes, reasoning, and answer tokens, divides by the task count, and applies the evaluation's index weight.
That is more useful than token price alone, but it still measures benchmark attempts. It does not divide spending by the number of results your team would accept, or include your staff's review time.
For a model shortlist and input capabilities, use our [LLM comparison](/blog/navigating-the-llm-landscape-a-comparative-analysis-of-leading-large-language-models). This article focuses on the bill.
## The October 2026 cost snapshot
The table uses **Intelligence Index v4.3.2**, checked October 8, 2026, and the same models and settings as the comparison article. Rows are sorted by rounded score, highest first; ties go to the lower cost. Token prices are US dollars per million uncached input and output tokens.
We show the highest published effort, or the single published reasoning row where no effort is named. The snapshot adds Claude Haiku 5.5, released October 7, and the public preview of Mistral Large 4. Two existing rows also have new task costs: Sonnet 5.5, after Anthropic's cut to its cache-read price, and Grok 4.6. Google announced Gemini 4 Argon on September 30 and has so far limited access to trusted cyber defenders and testers. It appears at the only setting Artificial Analysis publishes, at Google's introductory rates. These are reference settings; the largest effort label does not guarantee the best result or establish a maximum bill.
Mistral Large 4published reasoning row, public preview
$1.36 / $4.18
38
$1.13
Claude Sonnet 5max
$2 / $10
38
$5.09
GPT-5.6 Lunamax
$0.2 / $1.2
37
$0.18
DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813max, peak token rates
$1.32 / $3.96
36
$0.67
The table uses provider rates recorded by Artificial Analysis, including Standard pricing for Muse and peak token rates for DeepSeek. Cached input, time-of-day discounts, batch processing, long prompts, and tool fees can change your bill.
Three rows carry a time-limited price. Gemini 3.8 Flash's $0.75 / $3.75 is introductory through December 31, 2026 and rises to $1.50 / $7.50 on January 1, 2027. Gemini 4 Argon's $2 / $10 is introductory with no end date announced, and Google says $4 / $20 applies afterward. The asterisk on GPT-5.6 Sol marks a promotional rate: [OpenAI lists $4 / $20](https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/pricing) at least through November 21, 2026. Mistral Large 4 appears at its list rates, although Mistral took 50% off for two weeks from its October 6 launch. Claude Haiku 5.5's rates apply only to prompts up to 100,000 tokens; [a longer prompt pays](https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing) $0.50 / $2.50 on the whole request. Check the provider terms for the requests you will send; [MindsHub's rate card](/pricing) is separate.
## GPT-6 Sol and Luna: lower rates and measured task costs
[OpenAI's new Sol and Luna releases](https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-6-sol-and-luna/) cut the price of each token. Sol costs $2 input / $10 output per million tokens, half the promotional $4 / $20 for GPT-5.6 Sol. Luna costs $0.10 / $0.50, versus $0.20 / $1.20 for GPT-5.6 Luna.
Artificial Analysis now measures [Sol at 48 and $1.04 per task](https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/gpt-6-sol), against 47 and $1.99 for GPT-5.6 Sol. [Luna scores 38 at $0.07](https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/gpt-6-luna), against 37 and $0.18 for GPT-5.6 Luna. All four use max effort. These are new measurements, not the old task costs multiplied by a price cut. The opening example remains a comparison with the previous-generation Sol.
OpenAI released [GPT-6.1 Sol](https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/models/gpt-6.1-sol) on [September 29](https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/changelog) in its API as `gpt-6.1-sol`, listed at $2 input / $10 output per million tokens for prompts up to 272K input tokens, with higher rates above that. [Artificial Analysis's entry](https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/gpt-6-1-sol) scores 52 at $0.72 per task at max, at the same $2 / $10 list rates as GPT-6 Sol, though its cached input costs $0.10 per million instead of $0.20. That is about 31% below GPT-6 Sol’s measured task cost. Artificial Analysis's cost breakdown shows where the saving came from: input cost per task falls from $0.73 to $0.34, almost all of it in cache reads (from $0.51 to $0.12: half the price, on about half as many cached tokens), while output cost rises from $0.31 to $0.38, because its weighted output per benchmark task is about 23% higher (about 38k tokens against 31k) at the same $10 rate.
## Claude Haiku 5.5 and GPT-6 Luna: same rates, different bills
Claude Haiku 5.5 and GPT-6 Luna list identical token rates: $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens. At max effort, [Artificial Analysis](https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/claude-haiku-5-5) measures Haiku 5.5 at 43 and $0.21 per task, and Luna at 38 and $0.07. The same token rates produce three times the benchmark cost.
The difference is how many tokens each model uses. Haiku 5.5 writes about 162k output tokens per task at max, against about 50k for Luna, and re-reads about three times as much cached context. Artificial Analysis's breakdown puts its input and cache cost at $0.13 per task against $0.04, and its output cost at $0.08 against $0.03. It also scores five points higher, so the useful question is whether those points change the results you accept. Effort narrows the gap: Haiku 5.5's xhigh row scores 41 at $0.12, and its high row scores 38 at $0.08, level with Luna at max for about the same cost.
Anthropic's $0.10 / $0.50 also applies only to prompts up to 100,000 tokens. A longer prompt pays five times as much on the whole request, and cached tokens count toward that limit, so long-context work needs its own estimate.
## Where the newer low-cost models fit
**MiMo-V2.6-Pro** reaches 46 at $0.13 per benchmark task, using the rates recorded by [Artificial Analysis](https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/mimo-v2-6-pro). **DeepSeek V4.1 Flash** reaches 39 at $0.27. **GLM-5.3-Flash** reaches 42 at $0.25, while **Qwen3.8-Flash-Next** reaches 40 at $0.37. **MiMo-V2.6-Flash** reaches 38 at $0.06, level with GPT-6 Luna's 38 at $0.07. Artificial Analysis calls it slower than average and very verbose, so its low task cost comes from its $0.14 / $0.28 rates, not from short answers. These are useful candidates for a budget evaluation, especially when their supported input types match the work.
Two details keep the comparison honest. First, a model name can hide a release change: the current Qwen3.8-Max (0902) row scores 45 at $5.41, while the older 0803 row had different measurements. Flash-Next is a separate model, not a lower effort setting. Second, this is a new DeepSeek checkpoint. The older V4 Flash task cost does not describe V4.1 Flash, even when an API alias moves to the new version. V4 Pro remains available separately. See the [DeepSeek section of the comparison](/blog/navigating-the-llm-landscape-a-comparative-analysis-of-leading-large-language-models#deepseek-v41-flash-replaces-the-older-flash-api) for the current routing details.
### A new version can change the bill without changing token prices
Grok 4.7 and Grok 4.6 both list $2 input / $6 output per million tokens. At xhigh, their task costs are $3.74 and $1.75, respectively. The newer model scores 46 against 44, but costs more than twice as much per benchmark task. Its [launch announcement](https://x.ai/news/grok-4-7) describes changes aimed at longer coding and knowledge-work tasks; test whether those changes improve the results you accept.
Opus 5.5 offers a different comparison. Its $4 / $20 token rates are 20% below Opus 5's $5 / $25, while its max-effort task cost is about 2% higher: $5.98 against $5.86. Its score rises from 51 to 58. The 5.5 result includes the default fallback, so record that configuration with the comparison.
[Sonnet 5.5](https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/claude-sonnet-5-5) shows how little of a token discount can reach the bill. Its $2 / $10 rates are half Opus 5.5’s, but its max-effort task cost is only about 9% lower: $5.46 against $5.98. It scores 56 against 58. Both results include the default fallback.
### A cache-read price can move the bill on its own
On October 7, Anthropic [halved Sonnet 5.5's cache-read price](https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/release-notes/overview), from $0.20 to $0.10 per million tokens, and left its input and output rates unchanged. Artificial Analysis's measured task cost fell from $7.62 to $5.46 at the same score of 56. Cache reads still account for about $2.21 of that, because agentic tasks re-read a growing context at each step. If your workload caches heavily, compare cache-read prices as carefully as the headline rates.
### Try a lower effort setting
Grok 4.7 xhigh and high both round to 46, at $3.74 and $2.73 per task. Opus 5.5 max scores 58 at $5.98; high scores 54 at $1.82. GPT-6 Astra max scores 53 at $3.26, against 52 and $2.31 at xhigh. GPT-6.1 Sol max scores 52 at $0.72; high scores 50 at $0.32.
Sonnet 5.5 makes an especially large move: max scores 56 at $5.46, xhigh scores 52 at $2.01, and high scores 47 at $0.88. The cheaper setting gives up measured capability, so judge the saving against your acceptance criteria.
Those tradeoffs give you a useful experiment: run your tasks at both settings. Keep the extra reasoning where it improves accepted results, and lower it where it only adds time and cost.
### Read discounted tiers as contracts
Gemini 4 Argon is the clearest recent case. [Artificial Analysis](https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/gemini-4-argon) scores it 53 at $1.99 per task. GPT-6 Astra also rounds to 53, though Argon is just below it before rounding. That cost uses Google's [announced introductory rates](https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/gemini-models/gemini-4-argon/) of $2 / $10. Google says $4 / $20 applies afterward. At those rates the same run costs $3.98, about 22% more than Astra's $3.26 at its list rates.
Both of Argon's introductory rates are 80% below Astra's, yet it averages [about 62k output tokens per task against about 27k](https://artificialanalysis.ai/articles/gemini-4-argon-google-top-three-labs), so its introductory task cost is 39% lower, not 80%. The saving comes from the token price, not from using fewer tokens. GPT-6.1 Sol has the same $2 / $10 rates and costs $0.72 per task. As of October 8, access is limited to trusted cyber defenders in Google's Fairwind Program, with no date for wider access. Artificial Analysis lists a single setting, high, so there is no measured cheaper effort level to compare. Check access and billing terms before planning around Argon's price.
Meta's [Muse Contributor option](https://dev.meta.ai/docs/pricing-rate-limits/) charges $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.20 per million output tokens in exchange for permission to use prompts and completions in training. That can change which data you are allowed to send. The $1.60 Muse result above uses Standard pricing; it is not a measured Contributor result.
DeepSeek's [peak, off-peak, and cache rates](https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing/) are another reason to record billing conditions with an evaluation. A discount matters only when your actual requests qualify for it.
## MindsHub free tier
The [MindsHub free tier](/pricing#free-tier) includes selected models at no charge. Currently included: the **MindsHub Air model** and **Jev**. No credit card is required; [fair use and daily rate limits apply](/fair-use-policy).
## Measure the cost of results you can use
Start with ten representative tasks as a pilot. Include the documents, instructions, and tool access the model will have in practice, along with a few cases you know are difficult.
1. **Set acceptance criteria before running the models.** For extraction, that might mean every required field is correct. For a code change, it may mean the tests pass and a reviewer accepts the patch.
2. **Run two or three candidates.** Record the model version, reasoning setting, prompts, and billing conditions. Repeat tasks where inconsistent results would matter.
3. **Count the whole workflow.** Include failed attempts, retries, tool charges, and any follow-up model calls. Record human review time separately so a cheap but demanding model does not appear free to operate.
4. **Divide total spend by accepted results.** If you spend $12 across all attempts and accept eight results, the cost is $1.50 per accepted result. If none pass, the model has not established a usable cost for that workflow.
Ten tasks can reveal a large mismatch; they cannot establish a dependable success rate. Expand the evaluation before a consequential rollout, using the process in our [model selection guide](/blog/which-llm-to-choose-12-key-aspects-to-consider-when-building-ai-solutions).
Re-run it when the model, alias, prompt, or pricing changes. Keep the evaluation set and scoring rules outside any one agent workspace; the [workspace migration checklist](/blog/manus-alternative-ai-workspace-migration#the-ai-workspace-migration-checklist) covers the context and workflow details to preserve.
---
*[MindsHub Agents](/download) provides a workspace with a choice of models and Anton, an open-source agent harness. [MindsHub Inference](/unified-inference) gives developers access to the MindsHub model catalog through one API. Check [model availability](/models) and [MindsHub pricing](/pricing) for the service you plan to use.*
### The Best LLMs in 2026: A Plain-English Comparison
URL: https://mindshub.ai/blog/navigating-the-llm-landscape-a-comparative-analysis-of-leading-large-language-models — 2026-09-23
Updated: 2026-10-08
Compare Claude Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5.5, Haiku 5.5, GPT-6.1 Sol, Mistral Large 4, and other leading LLMs by capability, token price, and measured cost per task.
The model at the top of the leaderboard may be too expensive for everyday work. The cheapest API may need more attempts to get the answer right.
That leaves a practical question: which models deserve a test on your work? A team reviewing contracts needs different evidence from one building a coding agent or processing thousands of images.
This guide compares the main model families and the costs behind their headline prices. The October 8 snapshot adds Anthropic's **Claude Haiku 5.5**, released October 7, and the public preview of **Mistral Large 4**. It reflects Anthropic's cheaper cache reads for **Claude Sonnet 5.5** and also covers **GPT-6.1 Sol**, **Gemini 4 Argon** (still in limited access), **GPT-6 Sol and Luna**, **Claude Opus 5.5**, **Grok 4.7**, **MiMo-V2.6-Pro**, and **MiMo-V2.6-Flash**, and explains where the free MindsHub Air model and Jev fit. Scores use [Artificial Analysis's Intelligence Index v4.3.2](https://artificialanalysis.ai/leaderboards/models); they should not be compared with scores from earlier index versions.
## Where to start testing
- **Difficult reasoning and coding:** compare Claude Opus 5.5, Claude Sonnet 5.5, and GPT-6 Astra. They are among the leaders in this snapshot, but their task costs differ substantially. Gemini 4 Argon also scores 53, but access is limited to trusted cyber defenders for now, so treat it as a name to watch rather than a model to run today.
- **Everyday work:** test GPT-6.1 Sol for coding and multi-step workflows, and GPT-6 Luna or Claude Haiku 5.5 for focused, high-volume tasks. Compare them at the effort level you would use in production.
- **Mixed-media input:** Gemini 3.8 Flash accepts text, images, audio, and video. Muse Spark 1.3 and Qwen3.8-Flash-Next are also candidates when you need image or video input.
- **Lower-cost text and image work:** put MiMo-V2.6-Pro, MiMo-V2.6-Flash, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, and GLM-5.3-Flash on the shortlist. All four have downloadable, MIT-licensed weights.
- **More control over deployment:** compare GLM-5.3 and Kimi K3 as well. Check their licences and hardware requirements before choosing to host them yourself. Mistral says Large 4's weights will follow by the end of October, but it has not named their licence.
These are starting points. Run the same tasks through two or three candidates and inspect the results before committing.
## Models at a glance
Prices are US dollars per million uncached input and output tokens. The benchmark setting appears beneath each model name. We use the highest published reasoning effort, including Grok's xhigh row. When a source publishes one reasoning row without an effort label, we say so. Index scores are rounded to whole numbers, so models with the same score can still differ slightly. All figures were checked October 8, 2026.
Cost per task is the benchmark's weighted average token cost. It is neither a spending limit nor the cost of a result your team has accepted. The suggestions in the third column are our assessment of what to test, based on the capabilities and measurements discussed below.
Model
Type
Test for
Qualityintelligence index v4.3.2
Priceper 1M · in / out
Per taskbenchmark average
GPT-6 AstraOpenAI · max
Closed
Complex work across code, browsers, and documents
53
$10 / $50
$3.26
GPT-6.1 SolOpenAI · max
Closed
Coding and multi-step agent work
52
$2 / $10
$0.72
GPT-6 SolOpenAI · max
Closed
An earlier Sol reference for existing GPT-6 Sol workflows
48
$2 / $10
$1.04
GPT-6 LunaOpenAI · max
Closed
Focused text and image tasks at volume
38
$0.10 / $0.50
$0.07
GPT-5.6 SolOpenAI · max, promotional pricing
Closed
General coding, analysis, and professional work
47
$4 / $20
$1.99
GPT-5.6 TerraOpenAI · max
Closed
An upgrade reference for existing GPT-5.6 workflows
42
$2 / $12
$1.40
GPT-5.6 LunaOpenAI · max
Closed
Routine tasks at high volume
37
$0.2 / $1.2
$0.18
Claude Opus 5.5Anthropic · max, with fallback
Closed
Difficult reasoning, coding, and document work
58
$4 / $20
$5.98
Claude Sonnet 5.5Anthropic · max, with fallback
Closed
Reasoning and coding with effort tuned to the task
56
$2 / $10
$5.46
Claude Fable 5.1Anthropic · max, with fallback
Closed
Difficult reasoning, coding, and review
53
$10 / $50
$7.63
Claude Opus 5Anthropic · max
Closed
Complex coding and analysis below Fable token rates
51
$5 / $25
$5.86
Claude Fable 5Anthropic · max, with fallback
Closed
An older reference for existing Fable workloads
50
$10 / $50
$8.75
Claude Haiku 5.5Anthropic · max, prompts up to 100K tokens
Closed
High-volume tasks with an adjustable effort setting
43
$0.10 / $0.50
$0.21
Claude Sonnet 5Anthropic · max
Closed
Shorter Claude workflows, with effort tuned to the task