LLM Reference

The cheap leaderboard · for developers

Best for cheap

4 editor picks · 8 eligible models · Credible quality under $0.50 / 1M out.

Editorial pick plus benchmark and API pricing context.

See raw /best
EDITOR'S CHOICEResearched 3d ago

DeepSeek V4 Flash

DeepSeek · 1m context
Excellent

Embarrassingly good at near-zero cost — the new default for async work.

$0.22 / 1M out with LiveCodeBench 91.6 and a 1M window — nothing else is this capable this cheap.

Open model
The numbers
$/1M out
$0.18
$0.09 input
Context
1m
max window
Pros
  • +$0.22 / 1M out
  • +LiveCodeBench 91.6
  • +1M context, open weights
Cons
  • −Lighter on long agentic chains

Also worth picking

The runners-up

ranked by editorial pick orderEditorial tiersExcellentStrongSolid
#2
Qwen3.5-Flash
Alibaba · 1m
$0.26 / 1M out
$0.26 out with a 1M window — superb for batch summarization and high-volume pipelines.
#3
Gemini 3 Flash
Google DeepMind · 1m
$3.00 / 1M out
MMLU-Pro 88.6 at $3 out with 1M context — the most dependable cheap frontier model.
#4
GPT-5.4 Nano
OpenAI · 400k
$1.25 / 1M out
The only frontier-lab GPT that belongs on a cheap board — GPT-5.5 has no budget tier ($30 out); the nano is $1.25.

Eligibility

8 models are eligible for this board

Eligibility means tagged with useCases: [cheap]. Pins must come from this pool.

All picks