Sakana Namazu API Pricing
Sakana Namazu is the lab's first in-house single model — everything else it sells, Fugu Ultra included, orchestrates other labs' frontier models. It lists at $0.95/M input, $4.00/M output and $0.15/M cached input, which is the striking part: Sakana states Namazu is built on Kimi K2.6, and Moonshot sells that base model at $0.95 / $4.00 too. You pay the base model's price for the Japanese post-training. What is not in the per-token rate is the tooling: web search bills at $7.00 per 1,000 calls and code execution at $0.12 per session-hour, on top of tokens.
Run the numbers.
Calculator pre-loaded with Namazu's published rates. Tool fees are not in it — add $0.007 per search call and $0.12 per code-execution hour separately, and remember that tool results come back as billed input tokens on the next hop of the loop.
Real-world presets.
Repo-wide bug fix
Reading Japanese contracts
Support agent ticket triage
Research planning turn
Paste text. See tokens. See cost.
This is a chars-per-token approximation, not a real tokenizer. Actual tokens vary by language, code density, and tool-call overhead — counts are typically ±10–20% off for English prose, more for code or non-Latin scripts. For exact billing, use the vendor's official tokenizer.
| Model | Input /M | Output /M | Effective blended | Context | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sakana Namazu | $0.95 cache $0.15 | $4.00 | $0.59 current page | 256K | Japanese business and language work |
| Kimi K2.6 | $0.95 cache $0.16 | $4.00 | $0.598 the base model | 262K | The model Namazu is built on |
| Fugu Ultra | $5.00 cache $0.50 | $30.00 | $3.61 pricier | 272K | Sakana's multi-agent tier |
| Gemini 3.7 Flash | $0.75 cache $0.075 | $3.75 | $0.481 cheaper | 1M | Wider context, no Japanese tuning |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | $1.00 cache $0.10 | $5.00 | $0.682 pricier | 200K | Cheap Western tier for the same work |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | $0.20 cache $0.02 | $1.20 | $0.152 cheaper | 1.05M | Cheapest long-context alternative |
Frequently asked.
What Namazu costs, what the tools add on top, and how it relates to the model underneath it.
Q · 01 How much does Sakana Namazu cost? +
$0.95/M input, $4.00/M output and $0.15/M on a cache hit, billed pay-as-you-go. Thinking tokens bill at the output rate. Under AI//COST's 92/8 agentic blend with 82% cache hits, the effective planning figure is $0.59/M.Q · 02 Is the Japanese tuning charged for? +
$0.95 / $4.00 — the same input and output rates. Namazu's cache hit is a cent cheaper ($0.15 against $0.16). You are paying the base model's price and getting the post-training for free, at least at list.Q · 03 What do the built-in tools add? +
$0.007 per call, roughly half a planning turn's worth of tokens. Code execution: $0.12 per session-hour, counted from sandbox creation until the response completes. Both sit on top of tokens, and neither appears in the calculator above.Q · 04 Why does a tool-using request cost more than the token count suggests? +
$0.15/M, which is what keeps a long loop from running away.Q · 05 Is Namazu included in a subscription? +
$20, $100 and $200 monthly tiers cover Fugu and Fugu Ultra; Namazu is pay-as-you-go only. If your usage pattern is what the subscription was bought for, Namazu is billed on top of it.Q · 06 How does it differ from Fugu Ultra? +
$5 / $30, about 6x Namazu's effective rate. Namazu is a single in-house model behind one endpoint. Different products with the same API: the only thing that changes between them is the model parameter.Q · 07 What can it take as input? +
4 MB each. Context is 256K tokens, structured output is available through json_schema and json_object, and the endpoint speaks the OpenAI Responses and Chat Completions shapes as well as the Anthropic Messages shape.