Cheapest LLM APIs by quality tier
As of Oct 19, 2026, the cheapest frontier-tier model (LMArena score 1480+) is MiMo V2.6 Pro at $0.43 input / $0.87 output per million tokens from DeepInfra. In the strong tier (1430–1479) it is GLM 5.3 Flash at $0.075 input / $0.25 output per million tokens from DeepInfra. In the capable tier (1350–1429) it is gpt-oss-120b at $0.03 input / $0.17 output per million tokens from W&B Inference.
Ranked by blended price: five input tokens to one output token, at each model's cheapest seller. See also best value, the models that give the most score for the price.
Frontier · LMArena 1480+
The 10 cheapest of 15 models in this tier.
- 1
Xiaomi
LMArena 1491
$0.43 / $0.87from DeepInfra, official $0.435 / $0.87
$0.5033blended per 1M
- 2
Google
LMArena 1499
$0.75 / $3.75from Google Vertex AI
$1.25blended per 1M
- 3
Google
LMArena 1487
$0.75 / $3.75from Google Vertex AI
$1.25blended per 1M
- 4
Meta
LMArena 1490
$1.25 / $4.25from Meta
$1.75blended per 1M
- 5
Meta
LMArena 1484
$1.25 / $4.25from Meta
$1.75blended per 1M
- 6
Qwen
LMArena 1483
$1.65 / $4.95from DeepInfra, official $2.00 / $6.00
$2.20blended per 1M
- 7
Google
LMArena 1482
$1.50 / $9.00from Google Vertex AI
$2.75blended per 1M
- 8
Google
LMArena 1532
$2.00 / $10.00from Google Gemini
$3.33blended per 1M
- 9
Google
LMArena 1480
$2.00 / $12.00from Google Vertex AI
$3.67blended per 1M
- 10
Anthropic
LMArena 1516
$4.00 / $20.00from Amazon Bedrock Converse
$6.67blended per 1M
Strong · LMArena 1430–1479
The 10 cheapest of 48 models in this tier.
- 1
Z.ai
LMArena 1471
$0.075 / $0.25from DeepInfra, official $0.15 / $0.50
$0.1042blended per 1M
- 2
DeepSeek
LMArena 1432
$0.09 / $0.18from DeepInfra, official $0.30 / $1.20
$0.105blended per 1M
- 3
DeepSeek
LMArena 1463
$0.09 / $0.30from Sail
$0.125blended per 1M
- 4
Xiaomi
LMArena 1455
$0.14 / $0.28from Xiaomi MiMo
$0.1633blended per 1M
- 5
Google
LMArena 1443
$0.14 / $0.40from Amazon Bedrock Mantle
$0.1833blended per 1M
- 6
Tencent
LMArena 1438
$0.132 / $0.528from SiliconFlow
$0.198blended per 1M
- 7
Qwen
LMArena 1441
$0.04 / $1.35from NEAR AI Cloud
$0.2583blended per 1M
- 8
LMArena 1438
$0.1644 / $0.9864from AIHubMix, official $0.60 / $3.60
$0.3014blended per 1M
- 9
MiniMax
LMArena 1433
$0.20 / $0.90from Vultr, official $0.30 / $1.20
$0.3167blended per 1M
- 10
OpenAI
LMArena 1431
$0.20 / $1.20from Azure OpenAI
$0.3667blended per 1M
Capable · LMArena 1350–1429
The 10 cheapest of 53 models in this tier.
- 1
OpenAI
LMArena 1366
$0.03 / $0.17from W&B Inference
$0.0533blended per 1M
- 2
Google
LMArena 1358
$0.08 / $0.16from DeepInfra
$0.0933blended per 1M
- 3
Z.ai
LMArena 1351
$0.06 / $0.40from DeepInfra
$0.1167blended per 1M
- 4
LMArena 1384
$0.09 / $0.30from SiliconFlow
$0.125blended per 1M
- 5
StepFun
LMArena 1403
$0.10 / $0.30from SiliconFlow
$0.1333blended per 1M
- 6
Qwen
LMArena 1397
$0.10 / $0.40from Alibaba Cloud Model Studio
$0.15blended per 1M
- 7
LMArena 1419
$0.09 / $0.55from DeepInfra
$0.1667blended per 1M
- 8
OpenAI
LMArena 1392
$0.10 / $0.50from Microsoft Foundry
$0.1667blended per 1M
- 9
Z.ai
LMArena 1384
$0.125 / $0.45from Pinstripes, official $0.20 / $1.10
$0.1792blended per 1M
- 10
Xiaomi
LMArena 1428
$0.168 / $0.336from Novita AI
$0.196blended per 1M
Scores are the LMArena text leaderboard's overall ratings (CC BY 4.0); only the 164 models with a score and a fixed price are ranked. Prices in USD per million tokens, from LiteLLM and models.dev (both MIT licence), checked daily. Routers such as OpenRouter are not counted as the cheapest seller: their price follows whichever host is cheapest that day. Confirm on the seller's pricing page before you rely on a number.