On what date will the Aider polyglot leaderboard first list a sub-$5 run with at least 80.0% correct?

• My median prediction for a sub-$5 run with at least 80.0% correct on Aider’s polyglot leaderboard is 2nd September 2026.
• The mid-July 2026 official release of DeepSeek V4 Pro is the most likely catalyst, offering 80.6% accuracy on similar benchmarks at a token cost 30 times lower than current frontier models.
• Recent price wars in the AI sector have reduced GPT-4 class output costs from $20 to under $0.90 per million tokens, making the $5 total benchmark cost threshold technically feasible for highly capable models.
• Existing models like Gemini 3.5 Flash and Claude Sonnet 5 have already established a ‘near-miss’ zone, with 80%+ accuracy currently costing roughly $10.37.
• A high concentration of probability lies in August and September 2026, accounting for the time needed for community members to run the 225-exercise benchmark and for the results to be merged into Aider’s public data.
• Financial data shows all major AI providers (Meta, Google, Microsoft) significantly increased R&D spending and efficiency in early 2026, supporting a sustained trend of cost-performance breakthroughs.

Key figures

Historical context

Historically, the Aider polyglot leaderboard has tracked the rapid ‘commoditization’ of LLM reasoning. In late 2022, a GPT-4 class result cost roughly $20 per million tokens; by June 2026, equivalent results are available for $0.40 to $0.80 per million tokens. The benchmark itself evolved from simple Python tests to a 225-exercise suite across six languages, making it a standard for ‘agentic’ coding capability. Previous milestones followed a ‘Flagship-to-Flash’ pattern: a new capability is first achieved by an expensive ‘Pro’ or ‘Ultra’ model (e.g., GPT-5 at ~$30/M tokens), and within 3-6 months, a ‘Flash’ or ‘Sonnet’ version achieves parity at 10-20% of the cost. The current gap (81.3% at $10.37) is at the tail end of this cycle, where new models like DeepSeek V4 and Gemini 3.5 Flash are positioned to bridge the final $5 cost gap. The transition from 70% to 80% accuracy took roughly 9 months; the transition to sub-$5 pricing for that accuracy is expected to be faster due to the aggressive price war initiated by Chinese providers in Q2 2026.

Tailwinds

• DeepSeek V4 Price War: A 75% permanent price reduction announced in May 2026 makes Chinese models significantly cheaper for the same reasoning capability.
• Claude Sonnet 5 Launch: The June 30, 2026 release provides a highly capable U.S.-based model with introductory ‘budget-friendly’ pricing.
• Efficiency Gains: New architectures like ‘IndexShare’ and Sparse Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) are reducing the FLOPs required per token, allowing providers to maintain margins while slashing prices.
• Community Interest: Aider is a high-visibility leaderboard; the release of any new ‘Flash’ model typically triggers a community run within 7-14 days.
• Prompt Engineering: Improvements in Aider’s own internal ‘edit formats’ and token-saving techniques could reduce the cost of existing models below the $5 mark without needing new models.

Headwinds

• Aider-Specific Difficulty: Models often perform differently on the 225 Exercism tasks compared to SWE-bench; a model scoring 80% on one may only score 75% on the other.
• Token Overhead: Aider’s ‘edit format’ and multi-step thinking/debugging loops can consume significant tokens, potentially pushing the total cost above $5.00 even for very cheap models.
• Submission Lags: The leaderboard depends on community members or the Aider maintainer performing the runs and updating the public YAML file, which can happen in irregular batches.
• API Availability: Geopolitical tensions or export controls (like the June 2026 Commerce Department directive) could restrict access to the cheapest Chinese models (DeepSeek, GLM) for the primary benchmark runners.
• Memory Supply Shortage: A reported DRAM and HBM shortage in mid-2026 could force providers to pause price reductions or even increase API costs temporarily.

Detailed reasoning

My analysis indicates a high probability of this benchmark being met in late Q3 2026, driven by a convergence of ultra-low token pricing and high reasoning performance. The current state of the Aider polyglot leaderboard shows a ‘best’ cost of $10.37 for an 80%+ run (GPT-5 low). To reach sub-$5.00, the cost must drop by roughly 52% while maintaining or improving accuracy.

The primary driver for this forecast is the emergence of ‘Frontier-Class/Flash-Price’ models. DeepSeek V4 Pro is the most significant near-term catalyst. It has already demonstrated an 80.6% success rate on SWE-bench Verified (a similar, albeit different, coding benchmark) and features an output price of approximately $0.87 per million tokens—roughly one-thirtieth the cost of current U.S. frontier models like GPT-5.5. With the official release of DeepSeek V4 scheduled for mid-July 2026, I expect a surge in community-driven benchmark runs. Even if initial runs fall slightly short of the 80% threshold or the $5 cost limit, the subsequent two months (August and September) provide a window for ‘prompt engineering’ and ‘run optimization’—techniques that reduce token usage by shortening loops or improving the edit format efficiency.

Furthermore, Google’s Gemini 3.5 Flash and Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 5 provide alternative paths. While Sonnet 5’s pricing ($10/M output) makes a sub-$5 run tight, Gemini 3.5 Flash at $4.50 per million output tokens is extremely competitive. The financial data from Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta confirms that these companies are in a regime of massive R&D spending ($17B+ quarterly each) and improving gross margins, suggesting that the trend toward cheaper, more efficient inference is structurally supported.

I weighted the DeepSeek official release most heavily (mid-July), followed by a ‘tuning and submission’ lag that pushes the median prediction into early September. The reason for not predicting an earlier July date is the ‘date resolution criteria,’ which requires the entry’s date field to be on or after July 5, 2026, and the inherent delay between a model release and the manual process of running a 225-exercise benchmark and submitting the results to Aider’s YAML data file. There is also a ‘tail’ of probability extending into 2027 to account for the possibility that current models require further iterative improvements to reliably hit 80% on the polyglot-specific exercise set compared to the general SWE-bench.

Key uncertainties

• Benchmark Obsolescence: If the community shifts focus from the Polyglot benchmark to a newer suite (e.g., SWE-bench Pro) before the threshold is met, the question may never resolve.
• Cost Accounting Variations: Aider’s method for calculating ‘total_cost’ (e.g., treatment of cached tokens or input/output ratios) could vary across models and impact the $5.00 limit.
• Accuracy Plateau: It is possible that cheap ‘Flash’ models are optimized for speed but struggle with the specific cross-language reliability needed to hit exactly 80.0% on Aider.
• Geopolitical Barriers: US-China AI competition could lead to restricted API access for the models most likely to hit the target price point.

Conclusion

• Decision-makers should treat the mid-July 2026 DeepSeek V4 official release as the primary catalyst for this milestone, but expect a stabilization period for prompt tuning and submission verification through August.
• While model intelligence has crossed the 80% threshold, the $5.00 cost limit remains a significant hurdle that relies on the “token frugality” of the specific benchmark runner, making the date of submission as critical as the model release.
• Monitor Aider’s GitHub repository specifically for entries using DeepSeek V4 Pro, Gemini 3.5 Flash, or Llama 4-mini, as these are the most viable paths to sub-$5 runs.

Question: will Aider’s public polyglot leaderboard show, dated between 2026-07-05 and 2026-08-11, an entry with pass_rate_2 ≥ 80.0 and total_cost < $5? Forecasters agree the canonical signal is a new entry in the raw Aider YAML (not just external claims or PRs) and note no current in-window candidate: the leaderboard’s recent main-branch changes appear stale and the present cost/performance frontier is split—cheaper runs are under 80% while 80%+ runs remain well above $5. Historical behavior shows Aider can add results within days–weeks of a model release (examples: Gemini 2.5 Pro, GPT-5, DeepSeek), so late‑June/early‑July model launches could produce an in-window qualifying entry if contributors run and add them promptly. Several new models/pricings (OpenAI GPT-5.6 variants, Anthropic Sonnet 5, Google Gemini 3.5 Flash, xAI grok) make a cheap ≥80% crossing plausible in principle, but there’s no direct Aider evidence yet and external high-score runs/PRs either miss the cost threshold or are out-of-window. Forecasters’ numeric assessments cluster around an ~11–18% chance (two gave ~18%, one ~11%), with most probability mass concentrated mid-July to early August; risks include lumpy updates, reliance on contributor action, and the requirement that the YAML date field fall in-window. One team cautioned against overweighting a prior numerical agent’s limited data parsing, recommending watching raw YAML commits/PR merges as the canonical resolution path.

Forecast and Reasoning

Forecast: Probability distribution:

• 10.00% chance of value below 2026-07-16 11:07:52 UTC
• 20.00% chance of value below 2026-07-28 13:09:01 UTC
• 40.00% chance of value below 2026-08-11 21:00:00 UTC
• 60.00% chance of value below 2026-08-11 21:00:00 UTC
• 80.00% chance of value below 2026-08-11 21:00:00 UTC
• 90.00% chance of value below 2026-08-11 21:00:00 UTC

Forecast Reasoning

We need the first leaderboard entry whose YAML fields satisfy: pass_rate_2 >= 80.0, total_cost < 5.00, and (critically) the entry’s own date is between 2026-07-05 and 2026-08-11 inclusive. As of 2026-07-04, analysts report no qualifying entry: the cheapest runs are under $5 but sit in the low/mid-70% range, while the runs that clear 80% cost materially more than $5. So a qualifying entry requires either (a) a meaningful quality jump for a cheap model, (b) a big effective cost drop for an already-80%+ model (pricing cuts, much lower token use via a new edit format, etc.), and then (c) an actual benchmark run + update landing in this short ~5-week window.

A key uncertainty is update/benchmark cadence. Multiple analysts note the leaderboard file appears to have had long gaps / last updates clustered in 2025, which lowers the base rate of an in-window qualifying entry. However, one analyst cites recent repo activity/PRs around DeepSeek V4 Pro + a new “atomic” edit format that could plausibly improve performance/cost and trigger a fresh official run soon. I treat that as a plausible catalyst but not fully reliable (I can’t independently verify it here), so I increase the in-window probability somewhat vs a “dormant repo” baseline, but still keep the median in the open-after tail.

Net: I put roughly 1/3 probability that a qualifying (>=80%, <$5) run with an eligible date appears by 2026-08-11, skewed toward late July/early August if it happens, and ~2/3 probability that no such eligible entry appears in-window (resolving in the open-after tail).

An amateur forecast would commonly (1) ignore the strict date-field window and treat any later sub-$5/80% run as resolving in-range, (2) anchor on the deadline and stack mass at 2026-08-11 instead of using past-bound dates to express “doesn’t happen in-window”, or (3) extrapolate model progress without accounting for the operational bottleneck (someone must actually run the benchmark and merge/update the YAML). My forecast explicitly separates (a) technical feasibility (current gap between cheap and >=80% runs) from (b) process cadence (likelihood of a new qualifying entry being posted during the window), and it uses past-bound percentiles to encode substantial open-tail mass. Confidence: moderate, because the biggest driver is uncertain near-term maintainer/community activity.

Forecast rationale (numeric):

— Iteration 1 — Across the forecasts, the main reasoning is fairly consistent:

• Current status: No qualifying Aider polyglot leaderboard run is known yet as of early July 2026.
• Cost threshold is not the main barrier: With current cheap models, getting a run under $5 is seen as straightforward.
• The real hurdle is quality: The key question is whether a newly released low-cost model can reach at least 80.0% correct on the benchmark.
• New model releases are the main catalyst: Forecasts repeatedly point to recent or imminent cheap, capable models such as DeepSeek V4 Pro/Flash and Gemini 3.5 Flash as the likely drivers of the first qualifying result.
• Timing depends on Aider’s benchmark cadence: Optimistic reasoning assumes Aider tends to benchmark new models within a few weeks of release, making a mid-to-late July 2026 appearance plausible.
• But there is substantial uncertainty: More cautious forecasts stress that leaderboard updates may lag, models may miss the 80% mark, or the next sufficiently strong cheap model may not arrive until later.
• Distribution of expectations: There is some near-term probability in the July 5–August 11, 2026 window, but a significant share of the mass is placed in late 2026 to early 2027 if current models do not qualify.

Overall, the shared view is that the event is imminent but not yet realized, with the decisive factor being whether a newly benchmarked low-cost model can cross the 80% threshold soon.

— Iteration 2 — Across the forecasts, the dominant view is that a sub-$5, ≥80% Aider polyglot run is close to being feasible, and the main question is timing rather than capability.

Shared reasoning patterns

• Near-threshold performance already exists: The strongest cited evidence is that a cheap frontier model is already around 79.7% at under $5, implying only a small improvement is needed.
• Rapid model progress and cost declines: All rationales assume continued gains in coding ability, efficiency, and price/performance, making an 80%+ sub-$5 run increasingly likely soon.
• New releases as the likely trigger: The forecasts expect that a new model release or cheaper tier from major labs could push the leaderboard over the threshold.
• Timing concentrated in mid-2026: There is a notable chance in the July 5 to August 11, 2026 window, with some skew toward late August 2026 if the threshold is missed during the scoring window.
• Leaderboard mechanics add uncertainty: Because the leaderboard depends on PR submissions / volunteer updates, the date of first appearance is not purely about model capability.

Areas of consensus

• The event is viewed as plausible in the near term, not a distant possibility.
• If it does not happen during the summer 2026 window, the most likely next stop is late 2026.
• There is broad agreement that the long-run tail extends into 2027+ only if leaderboard updates are slow or the $5/80% frontier proves harder than expected.

Main differences

• The main divergence is probability, not direction: estimates range from roughly 38% to 50% for landing in the July–August window.
• Some forecasts are a bit more optimistic about an in-window result; others place the median just after the window, reflecting uncertainty about whether a qualifying submission lands on time.

Bottom line

The collective reasoning points to a high-likelihood near-term breakthrough, driven by an already-close cheap model plus expected summer model releases, with the biggest source of uncertainty being when a qualifying run gets submitted to the leaderboard rather than whether one is eventually achievable.

— Iteration 3 — Across the forecasts, the main reasoning pattern is that the target is seen as plausible but not imminent:

• Current baseline and required improvement: The best known run is well above the price cap, so reaching sub-$5 while staying at or above 80% correct requires a substantial cost reduction—roughly a 3x–4x improvement in cost efficiency without major quality loss.
• Expected mechanism for reaching the target: The most likely path is a smaller, distilled, or “mini” version of a strong frontier model. The forecasts assume that this kind of price-performance leap usually follows the release of a base model by about 12–18 months.
• Timing implication: With the relevant base-model generation dating to mid-to-late 2025, the consensus centers on late 2026 to early 2027 as the most likely period for the first qualifying leaderboard entry, with a median around December 2026 or somewhat earlier/later depending on the model.
• Near-term chance, but limited: There is a nontrivial early probability that a qualifying run appears in the scoring window in mid-2026, especially if a new model release or benchmark update happens quickly. But this is treated as less likely than not because no qualifying run is currently known and the window is short.
• Uncertainty and tail risks: A meaningful share of probability is assigned to late-2026/2027+ outcomes if distillation is slower than expected, if leaderboard updates are intermittent, or if the benchmark lags behind model capability. This creates a long tail beyond the upper bound.
• General consensus vs. disagreement: The forecasts broadly agree on the direction of travel and late-2026 timing, with only modest disagreement on whether the crossing happens in late summer/fall 2026 versus winter 2026.

The Current Performance-Cost Gap Reaching an 80% pass rate on the Aider polyglot benchmark currently requires expensive, frontier-level reasoning compute. The rationales highlight a significant chasm between capability and cost: models that comfortably exceed the 80% threshold (such as GPT-5 or o3-pro) cost well over the $5.00 limit, with the cheapest 80%+ option still costing around $10. Conversely, the highest-performing sub-$5 model (DeepSeek-V3.2-Exp) plateaus at roughly 74%. Bridging this gap requires either a massive price cut (over 50%) from premium API providers or a generational leap in capabilities for budget-tier models.

Upcoming Catalysts Forecasters point to a dense concentration of model releases and API updates scheduled within the narrow July–August 2026 resolution window that could trigger a qualifying leaderboard update:

• DeepSeek V4: Scheduled for a mid-July release, DeepSeek’s new generation is widely considered the most viable candidate. Given the provider’s historically aggressive pricing, an optimized V4 model could easily cost under $2.00 per run while potentially clearing the 80% capability hurdle.
• OpenAI Pricing and GPT-5.6: Competitive pressure may force OpenAI to drastically cut GPT-5 API prices, which would mathematically drop its benchmark cost below $5. Alternatively, the rollout of highly efficient GPT-5.6 “mini” or “Luna” tiers could provide the needed capability at a fraction of the cost.
• Claude 5 and Gemini 3.5: Anthropic’s Claude 5 Sonnet/Fable (aided by aggressive prompt caching) and Google’s Gemini 3.5 Pro or Flash releases offer alternative pathways. Furthermore, a free “experimental” or “preview” tier from Google could technically register as a $0.00 cost run on the leaderboard.

Maintainer Cadence and Structural Barriers Aider’s maintainer is known to benchmark new models and update the leaderboard swiftly—often within days or a few weeks of a stable API release. If a qualifying model drops, it will likely be recorded quickly.

However, many rationales express skepticism that the criteria will be met before the August deadline. The polyglot benchmark is notoriously rigorous, evaluating complex multi-file edits across compiled languages like Rust and C++. Furthermore, budget and reasoning models run a high risk of token inflation; even if they reach 80% accuracy, their output verbosity or lack of precise formatting could easily push their total API costs just over the $5.00 limit. Consequently, there is broad agreement that the milestone might not be achieved until later in the year, resulting in a resolution beyond the specified window.

SUMMARY

Question: On what date will the Aider polyglot leaderboard first list a sub-$5 run with at least 80.0% correct? Final Prediction: Probability distribution:

• 10.00% chance of value below 2026-07-27 12:00:00 UTC
• 20.00% chance of value below 2026-08-07 00:00:00 UTC
• 40.00% chance of value below 2026-11-20 00:00:00 UTC
• 60.00% chance of value below 2027-08-23 12:00:00 UTC
• 80.00% chance of value below 2029-03-02 00:00:00 UTC
• 90.00% chance of value below 2030-08-16 00:00:00 UTC

Total Cost: extra_metadata_in_explanation is disabled Time Spent: extra_metadata_in_explanation is disabled LLMs: extra_metadata_in_explanation is disabled Bot Name: extra_metadata_in_explanation is disabled

Report 1 Summary

Forecasts

Forecaster 1: Probability distribution:

• 10.00% chance of value below 2026-07-31 00:00:00 UTC
• 20.00% chance of value below 2026-08-10 00:00:00 UTC
• 40.00% chance of value below 2027-01-15 00:00:00 UTC
• 60.00% chance of value below 2028-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
• 80.00% chance of value below 2029-10-01 00:00:00 UTC
• 90.00% chance of value below 2031-07-01 00:00:00 UTC

Forecaster 2: Probability distribution:

• 10.00% chance of value below 2026-07-24 00:00:00 UTC
• 20.00% chance of value below 2026-08-04 00:00:00 UTC
• 40.00% chance of value below 2026-09-25 00:00:00 UTC
• 60.00% chance of value below 2027-04-15 00:00:00 UTC
• 80.00% chance of value below 2028-08-01 00:00:00 UTC
• 90.00% chance of value below 2029-10-01 00:00:00 UTC

Research Summary

The research summarizes that to resolve positively a Metaculus question a model must appear on the Aider polyglot leaderboard with pass_rate_2 ≥ 80.0% and total_cost < $5.00. As of July 2026, leaderboard entries ≥80% are dominated by high-cost frontier models (e.g., GPT-5 High 88.0% at ~$29.08; GPT-5 Medium 86.7% at ~$17.69; o3‑Pro High 84.9% at ~$146.32; Gemini 2.5 Pro 82.2% but its reported low cost was later corrected to ~$41.17). Lower-cost models historically sit well below 80% (DeepSeek R1 previously ~64.7–70.7% at ~$3–6 depending on config). The qualifying window for possible entries runs July 5–August 11, 2026.

The research highlights recent April 2026 model releases (notably DeepSeek V4, Qwen 3.6‑Plus, Llama 4, and “Flash”/“Mini” distilled variants) as the most likely catalysts to produce a sub-$5 run ≥80% during that window. It cites a community-observed halving of inference costs roughly every two months as a base rate that could bring previous ~$17.69 performance-costs down to sub-$5 by July/August 2026, while also noting typical 1–3 month benchmarking lag for community tuning. Prediction-market searches found no liquid exact-match markets; resolution is objective via Aider’s GitHub data (polyglot_leaderboard.yml), and runs must be merged into main branch data to count. The research concludes these structural and timing factors make the July 5–August 11 window a plausible period for a qualifying run.

Sources used (as named in the research): Metaculus; Aider polyglot_leaderboard.yml (GitHub); Manifold; Polymarket; Exercism; and internal numbered references cited in the research ([1], [2], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [13], [14], [25], [32], [36], [41], [50], [51], [53], [54]). The supplied research did not include verbatim URLs to copy.

RESEARCH

Report 1 Research

Hello! As your assistant, I have compiled a detailed research rundown to help you forecast this Metaculus question. The window for a qualifying entry opens tomorrow (July 5, 2026) and runs through August 11, 2026. Here is the context, recent news, base rates, and market data you need to anchor your forecast.

1. Current State of the Aider Polyglot Leaderboard

To trigger a positive resolution, a model must achieve a pass_rate_2 of $\ge$ 80.0% with a total_cost of $<$ $5.00.

As of July 2026, the $\ge$ 80% threshold is populated almost exclusively by premium frontier models that cost significantly more than $5.00 per benchmark run:

• GPT-5 (High): 88.0% pass rate, costing ~$29.08 [1][4].
• GPT-5 (Medium): 86.7% pass rate, costing ~$17.69 [1][4].
• o3-Pro (High): 84.9% pass rate, costing ~$146.32 [1].
• Gemini 2.5 Pro: Achieved an 82.2% pass rate [32]. There was significant community debate over its cost; while early estimates suggested it cost around $6.32 to run, this was later confirmed to be a bug in the reporting [41]. The actual cost for its high-performance run (which likely utilized heavy “thinking” tokens) was ~$41.17 [41][50].

Currently, the most notable sub-$5 (or near sub-$5) models are open-weights or distilled reasoning models, but their performance has historically lagged behind the 80% mark. For instance, DeepSeek R1 (tested in January 2025) achieved a ~64.7% to 70.7% pass rate at a cost ranging from ~$3.00 to $6.00 depending on the exact configuration and API pricing [7][36].

2. Relevant News and Recent Model Releases

The AI landscape saw a massive wave of new model releases in April 2026, which are currently being integrated and tested on community benchmarks. These models are the most likely catalysts to trigger a qualifying run during your July–August forecasting window:

• DeepSeek V4 Preview: Released in late April 2026, this trillion-parameter open-source model is priced aggressively at $0.14 per million input tokens for its Flash variant [53]. Given that DeepSeek R1 was already hitting ~70% at a low cost, V4 is a prime candidate to bridge the gap to 80% while staying well under the $5.00 limit [36][53].
• Qwen 3.6-Plus & Llama 4: Alibaba’s Qwen 3.6-Plus is being heavily utilized for “cost-effective agentic coding,” and Meta’s Llama 4 (Scout/Maverick) was released with massive parameter counts and context windows [53][54].
• New “Mini” and “Flash” variants: Models like GPT-5.5 and Gemini 3.1 Pro (released Q1/Q2 2026) have accompanying highly optimized routing systems [53]. If developers manage to benchmark a distilled or “Flash” variant of these frontier models on Aider, the cost could easily fall below $5.00.

3. Base Rates and Reference Classes

To ground your forecast in an outside view, consider these historical and quantitative benchmarks:

• The Halving of Inference Costs: A widely observed trend in the AI coding community is that the inference cost required to achieve a specific benchmark score on hard coding tasks halves roughly every 2 months [25]. If a $\ge$ 80% pass rate cost roughly $17.69 (via GPT-5 Medium) in early 2026, applying a 2-month halving rate suggests the cost could naturally cross the sub-$5 threshold by July/August 2026 [1][25].
• Benchmarking Lag: Major models were released in April 2026 [53]. Historically, it takes 1 to 3 months for the community to optimize prompts, “effort” parameters, and API configurations to get open-weight or highly optimized proprietary models perfectly tuned for the Aider benchmark harness [6][7]. We are currently in the exact window where these optimized runs typically hit the leaderboard.
• Score Distribution: The Aider polyglot benchmark is uniquely difficult (225 of Exercism’s hardest problems across 6 languages) [4][5]. The jump from 70% to 80% is non-trivial and usually requires advanced reasoning capabilities, meaning it is highly dependent on new architectures (like multi-token prediction or adaptive MTP) rather than just API price cuts [13][14].

4. Prediction Markets and Reliability

A direct search across prediction market platforms (like Manifold or Polymarket) did not return a liquid, exact-match market for this specific Aider polyglot cost-performance criteria. However, you can use proxy markets to gauge reliability:

• Historically, markets tracking SWE-bench and Aider milestones on Metaculus command high participation (often hundreds of forecasters), meaning the aggregate forecast on the platform itself will be highly efficient.
• Because the resolution source is a specific GitHub YAML file (polyglot_leaderboard.yml), resolution is objective and deterministic [2][8]. Be mindful that runs must be officially merged into Aider’s main branch data to count, meaning weekend runs or pending pull requests might delay the official “date” field by a few days [51].

Summary for your Forecast

The gap to close is effectively pushing an $18 run down to $5, or pushing a 70% open-weight model up by 10 points. Given the historical 2-month cost-halving base rate [25], and the recent release of highly capable, ultra-cheap models like DeepSeek V4 in April 2026 [53], the fundamental conditions for this event to occur between July 5 and August 11, 2026, are highly favorable.

FORECASTS

R1: Forecaster 1 Reasoning

Conditioning on no annulment, and assuming any already-existing eligible-looking row does not count, I accept the critic’s latest push. The biggest correction is that my Round 4 prose and percentile table were not aligned: a table with the 20th percentile just before the cutoff and the 30th far after it should not be described as 26–28% in-window. I now put the probability of a qualifying date on or before 2026-08-11 at roughly 22–24%.

The main reason is still that this is overwhelmingly a leaderboard-ingestion / maintainer-attention / admissibility forecast. The rendered leaderboard says it was last updated November 20, 2025, and a search of that page finds no “2026” entries. The official ≥80% rows remain above the cost threshold—e.g. GPT-5 high at 88.0% / $29.08, GPT-5 medium at 86.7% / $17.69, and GPT-5 low at 81.3% / $10.37—while the cheap official frontier remains below 80%, such as DeepSeek R1 at 71.4% / $4.80 and DeepSeek-V3.2-Exp variants around 70–74% below $5. (aider.chat)

The process-friction evidence is strong. The GitHub PR search shows 19 open / 18 closed PRs matching “polyglot,” and the visible main-branch commit history starts with commits on May 22, 2026, which is consistent with a broader maintenance lull rather than just a small benchmark backlog. (github.com)

I also accept the critic’s “wrong file” point as a genuine negative update. The Gemini PR is still evidence that cheap ≥80% capability may exist: it reports Gemini 3 Flash at 82.7% and was opened on March 15, 2026, with no reviews or assignee shown. But its file diff modifies aider/website/_data/edit_leaderboard.yml, not the exact polyglot_leaderboard.yml required by this question. That makes it less directly resolution-relevant than I had treated it. (github.com)

I still do not go very low, because the technical threshold plausibly has been crossed in some form. DeepSeek V4 Pro reports 212/225 = 94.2% in a PR that adds an entry to polyglot_leaderboard.yml, and Squad reports 222/225 = 98.7% in the exact polyglot YAML file. But both are procedurally weak for this question: DeepSeek’s row has a pre-window 2026-06-18 date and is bundled with an atomic edit format plus many commits, including history around removing hidden-test-source reflection; Squad is pre-window, non-Aider-native, and reports total_cost: 0.0000 via subscription-style Copilot CLI pricing. (github.com)

My updated decomposition is roughly:

• Comparable ≥80% / <$5 setup exists or can be made: 50–70%.
• Someone makes a clean, correctly filed, eligible-date polyglot_leaderboard.yml submission: 25–40%.
• It gets accepted/listed by observation: 25–45% conditional, with strong uncertainty.
• Direct maintainer-generated / batch-clear / loophole paths add some small mass.

Net: ~23% in-window. The modal outcome remains: a technically sufficient run exists or is easy to create, but no acceptable row with a 2026-07-05 to 2026-08-11 date appears in the official data source before resolution observation.

Updated prediction:
Percentile 0.1: 2026-07-05
Percentile 1: 2026-07-09
Percentile 5: 2026-07-22
Percentile 10: 2026-07-31
Percentile 20: 2026-08-10
Percentile 30: 2026-09-30
Percentile 40: 2027-01-15
Percentile 50: 2027-07-01
Percentile 60: 2028-01-01
Percentile 70: 2028-10-01
Percentile 80: 2029-10-01
Percentile 90: 2031-07-01
Percentile 95: 2033-01-01
Percentile 99: 2036-01-01
Percentile 99.9: 2039-01-01

R1: Forecaster 2 Reasoning

Conditioning on non-annulment.

The critic’s strongest point is valid: this is less a pure “will AI get cheap enough?” question and more a specific YAML/maintainer-process question. The rendered leaderboard still shows the cost/performance gap: GPT-5 low is already above threshold at 81.3%, but costs $10.37, while the strongest cheap DeepSeek entries are still below threshold, e.g. DeepSeek-V3.2-Exp Reasoner at 74.2% / $1.30 and DeepSeek R1 0528 at 71.4% / $4.80. (aider.chat) The leaderboard-file history is also a major negative signal: the polyglot_leaderboard.yml commit history shows its latest visible commit on October 4, 2025, despite the broader Aider repo still receiving 2026 commits. (github.com)

I also accept the critic’s point that open PRs are more bearish than I first weighted. A community PR claiming a new #1 Claude Opus 4.7 result has been open since April 24, 2026, with a claimed 93.3% score but $26.27 cost and no reviewers visible. (github.com) The DeepSeek V4 support PR is open as well; it was explicitly motivated by deepseek-v4-flash and deepseek-v4-pro, but review comments flagged metadata/cost/context issues and CI requiring maintainer action. (github.com) That makes the chain “released model → runnable in Aider → benchmarked → costed correctly → merged into exact official data with in-window date” meaningfully brittle.

I still defend the positive side somewhat. The technical gap is not enormous: the benchmark already has an 80%+ run only a bit over 2× the cost cutoff, and a 74% run at extremely low cost. A single strong cheap frontier-mini/open-weight model, a price cut plus rerun, or a cost-accounting artifact could satisfy the YAML criteria. The Metaculus question itself also creates a small incentive for someone to try a qualifying run and submit it. And because resolution keys on the entry’s date field, a result run during July 5–August 11 could still count even if merged later, depending on observation timing.

My update is therefore to move down from ~45% in-window but not as far as a very low estimate. I now put the probability of a qualifying date in the 2026-07-05 through 2026-08-11 window at about 32%. The critic’s 30–35% range seems close; I lean just above the contrarian assistant’s 28% because the technical crossing looks quite plausible and the broader repo is not abandoned, but I agree the official-leaderboard bottleneck is the dominant issue.

Updated prediction:
Percentile 0.1: 2026-07-05
Percentile 1: 2026-07-09
Percentile 5: 2026-07-17
Percentile 10: 2026-07-24
Percentile 20: 2026-08-04
Percentile 30: 2026-08-11
Percentile 40: 2026-09-25
Percentile 50: 2026-12-15
Percentile 60: 2027-04-15
Percentile 70: 2027-10-01
Percentile 80: 2028-08-01
Percentile 90: 2029-10-01
Percentile 95: 2031-01-01
Percentile 99: 2034-01-01
Percentile 99.9: 2038-01-01

Frontier Forecast — Post 595

Modal: After Jan 10, 2027 (31.8%) • frontier aggregate • 3m40s

Interpret Summary

• Reading: strict
• Type: strict
• Window: Qualifying entry’s date field must be >= 2026-07-05 and <= 2026-08-11; resolver reads the YAML at or by 2026-08-11

Resolution sources/checks:

• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Aider-AI/aider/main/aider/website/_data/polyglot_leaderboard.yml: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Aider-AI/aider/main/aider/website/_data/polyglot_leaderboard.yml - Resolver URL extracted mechanically from resolution criteria
• https://aider.chat/docs/leaderboards/: https://aider.chat/docs/leaderboards/ - Resolver URL extracted mechanically from resolution criteria

Edge cases:

• If an entry has pass_rate_2 exactly 80.0, it qualifies (the threshold is >=); if total_cost is exactly 5.00, it does NOT qualify (threshold is strictly <5.00).
• The resolver reads the date field embedded in the YAML entry, not the git commit timestamp — a run submitted late but backdated in the YAML to within the window would still qualify.
• If multiple entries have the same earliest qualifying date, the resolution is still that date regardless of how many entries share it.

Frontier Views (5/5)

• frontier_1 - Modal: Aug 11, 2026 to Sep 18, 2026 (35.0%)

  • Historical leaderboard entries show a strong accuracy–cost tradeoff: ≥80% pass_rate_2 has required high-cost runs, while sub-$5 runs have much lower accuracy. Achieving ≥80% across 225 tasks for <$5 implies a major price/performance or accounting shift within a 5-week window, which appears unlikely.

• frontier_2 - Modal: After Jan 10, 2027 (60.0%)

  • The question requires a NEW polyglot leaderboard entry with pass_rate_2 >= 80.0, total_cost < $5.00, and a date field in 2026-07-05..08-11. Research shows the official Aider polyglot leaderboard was ‘last updated November 20, 2025’ and has been dormant with no 2026 entries through the 2026-07-04 forecast date (~7.5 months).

• frontier_3 - Modal: After Jan 10, 2027 (80.0%)

  • Achieving an 80.0% pass rate on the Aider polyglot benchmark (225 tests across 6 languages) is extremely demanding. Historical data from the leaderboard shows that affordable/single models (like GPT-4o or Claude 3.5 Sonnet) peak in the 20-50% range.

• frontier_4 - Modal: Aug 11, 2026 to Sep 18, 2026 (80.0%)

  • Current authoritative YAML (queried 2026-07-04) contains no entries meeting all three criteria simultaneously; high-accuracy runs (>80% pass_rate_2) cost $17–$146 while sub-$5 runs remain well below 65%. The 38-day observation window beginning 2026-07-05 is short and historical cost-accuracy trade-offs show no near-term pathway to a qualifying submission.

• frontier_5 - Modal: Jul 20, 2026 to Jul 27, 2026 (18.0%)

  • no qualifying entry exists as of 2026-07-04; window is 38 days; probability mass on early-to-mid July (b1/b2) for first cheap-mini benchmark to land, with substantial mass on “above upper bound” because the Aider polyglot board updates are infrequent and the $5 cost threshold is restrictive

Adjudication

• Material notes

  • frontier_3: flag_only/warning - Long tail mass is arguably too large given the documented cadence of updates and pending PR activity; distribution is overly concentrated on a single distant bin.
  • frontier_4: flag_only/warning - Distribution overconcentrated in a single post-window bin and assigns zero mass to later months despite dormancy and backdating risks.

• Guidance

  • Two lanes show distributional issues that warrant reviewer attention: frontier_3 places an unusually large (>70%) mass on the distant long-tail (After Jan 10, 2027) that appears larger than the evidence strictly supports; frontier_4 concentrates ~80% mass in the single immediate post-window bin and assigns zero mass to later months despite…

• Revision

  • Frontier revision skipped: no_selected_adjudicator_reviews.

Final Distribution (date ranges)

Sources Checked

• Resolver: Resolver URL extracted mechanically from resolution criteria - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Aider-AI/aider/main/aider/website/_data/polyglot_leaderboard.yml
• Resolver: Resolver URL extracted mechanically from resolution criteria - https://aider.chat/docs/leaderboards/
• frontier_2: aider.chat/docs/leaderboards/ via serper_search
• frontier_2: polyglot_leaderboard.yml via resolution_source_query; aider.chat leaderboard snippets
• frontier_2: Reddit r/LocalLLaMA via serper_search
• frontier_3: https://github.com/aider-ai/aider/issues/5321

wooley_rhino • run 7451c8e2 • $2.25 • 3m40s

Extracted Date Percentile Values: {0.1: 1783209600.0, 1.0: 1783296000.0, 5.0: 1783814400.0, 10.0: 1784332800.0, 15.0: 1784764800.0, 20.0: 1785196800.0, 25.0: 1785628800.0, 30.0: 1786406400.0, 35.0: 1786492800.0, 40.0: 1786492800.0, 45.0: 1786492800.0, 46.0: 1786492800.0, 47.0: 1786492800.0, 48.0: 1786492800.0, 49.0: 1786492800.0, 50.0: 1786492800.0, 51.0: 1786492800.0, 52.0: 1786492800.0, 53.0: 1786492800.0, 54.0: 1786492800.0, 55.0: 1786492800.0, 60.0: 1786492800.0, 65.0: 1786492800.0, 70.0: 1786492800.0, 75.0: 1786492800.0, 80.0: 1786492800.0, 85.0: 1786492800.0, 90.0: 1786492800.0, 95.0: 1786492800.0, 99.0: 1786492800.0, 99.9: 1786492800.0}

Model’s Answer:

Analysis

Step one: Understanding the current gap

As of 2026-07-04, the leaderboard shows a clear bifurcation:

• Models at ≥80% correct all cost $10+ (cheapest: gpt-5 low at $10.37)
• Models under $5 top out at 74.2% (DeepSeek V3.2-Exp Reasoner at $1.30) and 71.4% (DeepSeek R1-0528 at $4.80)

The gap is ~6-9 percentage points in accuracy AND ~2x in cost simultaneously. This is a dual barrier.

Step two: Cadence of leaderboard updates

The YAML leaderboard can be updated on any calendar day — there is no fixed weekly/monthly reporting schedule. This means resolution can fall on any date within the window (July 5 – August 11 = 37 days). The distribution should be smooth across those days, not clustered on particular weekdays.

Step three: Probability of resolution within window

Factors favoring resolution:

• AI models are improving rapidly; new efficient models appear frequently
• DeepSeek R1-0528 is already at $4.80 (just under the threshold) — a capability jump in a successor could cross 80%
• New Qwen3, DeepSeek V3.3, or similar releases could land at the intersection
• 37-day window is relatively long for the current pace of development

Factors against resolution:

• The capability gap (6-9pp) is significant for cheap models
• The cost gap (2x) is significant for accurate models
• No announced model specifically targets this zone
• Recent history shows the dual constraint has not been met despite strong incentives
• The research notes no reports of any imminent qualifying run

Step four: Key assumptions and failure probabilities

Assumption A: No new model release in the next 37 days crosses 80% at sub-$5 cost. Failure probability: ~25-30% (AI development is rapid, but the threshold is specific).

Assumption B: Existing models (like DeepSeek successors) don’t see enough improvement in the window. Failure probability: ~20%.

Assumption C: No existing high-accuracy model sees API pricing drops below the implied $5/run threshold. Failure probability: ~10%.

Combined probability of some path to resolution: roughly 25-30%.

Step five: Distribution within window

If it resolves, it’s roughly uniform across the 37 days (no particular day is more likely than another for model releases). Slight front-loading toward late July / early August when new model cycles tend to cluster.

Why earlier: A surprise release from DeepSeek, Qwen, or another lab immediately pushes a new model past 80% at sub-$5 cost within days of the window opening.

Why later / above bound: The dual constraint of accuracy AND cost is rare and unprecedented at this threshold. The gap remains stubborn. Probability ~72%.

Probability of resolution within window: ~28%. The “above upper bound” case gets ~72% of the weight, mapped to 2026-08-12 as the “no resolution” date.

Percentile .1: 2026-07-05 Percentile 1: 2026-07-06 Percentile 5: 2026-07-12 Percentile 10: 2026-07-18 Percentile 15: 2026-07-23 Percentile 20: 2026-07-28 Percentile 25: 2026-08-02 Percentile 30: 2026-08-11 Percentile 35: 2026-08-12 Percentile 40: 2026-08-12 Percentile 45: 2026-08-12 Percentile 46: 2026-08-12 Percentile 47: 2026-08-12 Percentile 48: 2026-08-12 Percentile 49: 2026-08-12 Percentile 50: 2026-08-12 Percentile 51: 2026-08-12 Percentile 52: 2026-08-12 Percentile 53: 2026-08-12 Percentile 54: 2026-08-12 Percentile 55: 2026-08-12 Percentile 60: 2026-08-12 Percentile 65: 2026-08-12 Percentile 70: 2026-08-12 Percentile 75: 2026-08-12 Percentile 80: 2026-08-12 Percentile 85: 2026-08-12 Percentile 90: 2026-08-12 Percentile 95: 2026-08-12 Percentile 99: 2026-08-12 Percentile 99.9: 2026-08-12

The public leaderboard file is the canonical constraint and has exhibited multi‑month silence, so listings depend on explicit maintainer action.

Each row’s date field is the formal timestamp, and the resolution window admits only rows dated between 2026‑07‑05 and 2026‑08‑11 regardless of merge timing.

Performance and cost have been disentangled: several cheap runs advanced rapidly to the mid‑70s but have not crossed 80 percentage points in main.

Separate pending entries already clear both the score and cost thresholds but carry dates earlier than the allowed window.

A qualifying outcome within the window requires either a new cheap ≥80% run or an approved edit/rerun that assigns an in‑window date to a qualifying submission.

Those pathways are plausible but procedurally gated; in‑window edits are easier but depend on maintainer willingness and policy, so calendar risk is high.

Key uncertainties are maintainer behavior and the semantics of reported cost values, since zero reported cost can reflect subscription or unmeasured billing rather than measured marginal cost.

Sensitivity is highest to whether pending high‑score, low‑cost entries are retimed or rerun; absent that, the chance of an in‑window listing before August 11 remains small, roughly nine percent.

Forecast: No P50 (median = N/A). The models mainly expect the first qualifying date (sub-$5 and ≥80.0% correct on the official Aider polyglot leaderboard) will be after 2026-08-11, so there isn’t a clean “most likely” in-window median.

• The leaderboard hasn’t meaningfully changed in months, with the official file last updated in early October 2025—so the key hurdle is whether it gets updated at all during the July–August 2026 window.
• Even if updates resume, the “cheap + ≥80%” bar is currently hard to hit based on the existing history described: the best sub-$5 results shown don’t yet reach 80%.
• A qualifying entry would likely require a sudden return to activity, such as rerunning the benchmark with newer, cheaper models and publishing the results promptly.
• Most of the probability is placed in the “no qualifying update inside the window” outcome, producing a long tail of possible later dates rather than a tight cluster.
• Different estimates disagree on exact percentiles, but all converge on the idea that a first qualifying entry during the specified window is unlikely.