Beating April’s best coding model cost 20x less by October.

We analyzed every model listed on Code Arena: WebDev from December 2025 to October 23, 2026: 105 models from 24 labs across 44 weekly leaderboards, plus what every answer cost from April to October.

The pace of releases has stepped up. Last winter, about five new models entered Code Arena each month. From July to October, it was 12 to 14, almost one every other day. And from May to October, the top score climbed 3x faster than it did over the winter.

Even though the labs are racing, it’s the users who are winning. By October, Xiaomi’s MiMo-V2.6-Flash outscored Claude Opus 4.7, April’s top model, at less than a twentieth of the price. And for answers costing between 5 cents and $1, October’s best model had an estimated 65-80% win rate against April’s best at the same price.

Read more about how the AI race is speeding up, and what it means for the field, in the article by @DawidGalarowicz below.