AI Release Tracker

tom@tomrochette.com (Tom Rochette) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

AI Release Tracker is a free, ad-free timeline of major frontier AI model releases since ChatGPT’s launch on November 30, 2022, with launch-day benchmark scores, pricing, and machine-readable exports for each entry. Facts below verified as of 2026-09-24; the live site blocks automated fetchers (HTTP 429), so the current-content evidence comes from the 2026-08-26 archived copy.

It answers the one question every other site in this category layers something on top of: what shipped, when, with which launch-day numbers.

What it is
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A timeline site whose FAQ describes “a free, continuously updated timeline of every major AI model release from the world’s leading AI labs”, tracking 231 models from 10 companies as of the archived copy (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, xAI, DeepSeek, Mistral, Moonshot AI, Z.ai, Qwen). Each entry records the release date, benchmark scores as published at launch (GPQA Diamond, SWE-Bench Verified, MMMU, Terminal-Bench, and others), parameter counts, context windows, license tier, and first-party API pricing where the lab publishes one. Scores are framed as historical records, not live standings, and third-party-leaderboard figures are marked with their source. The site also publishes “Expected” next-release dates per lab, which the author described as an average of the intervals between previous releases. Surfaces: the timeline, per-benchmark ranking pages, model compare pages, analytics, pricing comparison, free email notifications on new releases, and flat-file exports: /models.json and a llms-full.txt corpus described as “plain text for LLM ingestion”, free to use with an attribution link.

Status
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Active but nearly invisible: the dataset was last updated 2026-08-26 (newest tracked release Qwen3.8-Flash-Next), and Wayback captures through June, July, and August 2026 show the corpus growing month over month. It was Show HN’d on 2025-12-02 by user curlii and drew 2 points and 6 comments; that thread is still the site’s entire public footprint, and no GitHub repository exists. The footer reads “© 2026 To sider ApS · CVR DK42753491”, a Danish private limited company, so it is a side-project-grade operation with corporate paperwork. Treat it as alive, useful, and one person away from dormant.

Strengths
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The flat files (/models.json, llms-full.txt) are the category’s friendliest data source for agents: one fetch, structured, free, attribution-licensed.
Launch-day scores are quotable in a way leaderboard standings are not, because a record of what the lab claimed on release day does not silently move.
No ads, no account wall, and a scope (releases only) it does not pretend to extend past.

Cautions
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Single-operator bus factor: one person, one company registration, no repository, no visible team.
Verification is thin: the community footprint is one small Show HN thread, so data-entry errors would surface slowly.
Naming quirks (xAI labeled “SpaceXAI”) and via-attributed benchmark numbers mean the corpus needs spot checks before you cite it.
The live site 429s automated fetchers, so agents should use the flat files or the archive rather than scraping the UI.

Pricing
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Free to use, no ads. Free tier includes email notifications on new releases; a paid “Pro instant alerts” tier sends email the moment a model is added, with no price published. No paid price is stated, so no price history applies.

Compared to
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LLM Stats: current composite rankings with an API; AI Release Tracker is the historical log LLM Stats’s score churns over.
Artificial Analysis: live quality, price, and speed; choose it for what is true today, the tracker for what was claimed at launch.
Epoch AI: trend datasets and research; the tracker is the raw release stream Epoch-style analysis consumes.

Bottom line
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Recommended for engineers and agents who want a dated, quotable “what shipped when” record with a machine-readable corpus, not for deciding what to deploy this week. My disagreeable claim: this is the most valuable site in the category for agents and the least visited by humans, because “what changed since last time” is the first question of every refresh run, and this is the only member that answers it as a flat file.

Changes
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2026-09-24 - Created.

References
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https://web.archive.org/web/20260826134434/https://aireleasetracker.com/ - archived homepage: FAQ (231 models, 10 companies, free/pro alerts, no ads), footer “To sider ApS · CVR DK42753491” (fetched 200, 2026-09-24)
https://web.archive.org/web/20260826134434/https://aireleasetracker.com/llms-full.txt - dataset scope, last-updated date, benchmark glossary, attribution terms (fetched 200, 2026-09-24)
https://web.archive.org/web/20260826134434/https://aireleasetracker.com/models.json - structured export: 231 models with release dates, parameters, context windows, benchmarks (fetched 200, 2026-09-24)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46119002 - the Show HN thread and the author’s description of purpose and notifications (fetched 200, 2026-09-24)
https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/items/46119002 - full thread JSON backing the footprint claim (fetched 200, 2026-09-24)
https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?query=aireleasetracker&tags=story - the single-story footprint evidence (fetched 200, 2026-09-24)
https://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=aireleasetracker.com&matchType=domain - snapshot cadence and subpage inventory through 2026-08-26 (fetched 200, 2026-09-24)

releases on tomrochette.com

AI Release Tracker

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releases on tomrochette.com

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