126 AI models with API pricing under $1 per million output tokens. These ultra-budget options deliver surprising quality - many include vision, reasoning, and function calling capabilities.
| # | Model | Score | Input $/1M | Output $/1M |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Grok 4.1 FastxAI | 87 | $0.200 | $0.500 |
| 2 | Qwen3.5-9BAlibaba | 85 | $0.050 | $0.150 |
| 3 | Seed-2.0-MiniByteDance | 85 | $0.100 | $0.400 |
| 4 | Seed 1.6 FlashByteDance | 85 | $0.075 | $0.300 |
| 5 | Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite Preview 09-2025Google | 84 | $0.100 | $0.400 |
| 6 | Grok 4 FastxAI | 83 | $0.200 | $0.500 |
| 7 | Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking)Alibaba | 83 | $0.260 | $0.780 |
| 8 | MiMo-V2-FlashXiaomi | 83 | $0.090 | $0.290 |
| 9 | Trinity Miniarcee-ai | 82 | $0.045 | $0.150 |
| 10 | Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3BAlibaba | 82 | $0.090 | $0.450 |
| 11 | gpt-oss-safeguard-20bOpenAI | 82 | $0.075 | $0.300 |
| 12 | Mercury 2Inception | 81 | $0.250 | $0.750 |
| 13 | Gemini 2.5 Flash LiteGoogle | 81 | $0.100 | $0.400 |
| 14 | Qwen3 VL 32B InstructAlibaba | 81 | $0.104 | $0.416 |
| 15 | Qwen3 VL 8B InstructAlibaba | 81 | $0.080 | $0.500 |
| 16 | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B InstructAlibaba | 81 | $0.130 | $0.520 |
| 17 | Qwen3 30B A3B Thinking 2507Alibaba | 81 | $0.080 | $0.400 |
| 18 | GPT-4.1 NanoOpenAI | 81 | $0.100 | $0.400 |
| 19 | Mistral Small 4Mistral AI | 79 | $0.150 | $0.600 |
| 20 | Qwen3.5-FlashAlibaba | 79 | $0.065 | $0.260 |
| 21 | Qwen3 Coder FlashAlibaba | 78 | $0.195 | $0.975 |
| 22 | KAT-Coder-Pro V1Kuaishou | 77 | $0.207 | $0.828 |
| 23 | Reka Edgereka | 77 | $0.200 | $0.200 |
| 24 | DeepSeek V3.2 ExpDeepSeek | 77 | $0.270 | $0.410 |
| 25 | Qwen Plus 0728Alibaba | 77 | $0.260 | $0.780 |
| 26 | Qwen3 Coder NextAlibaba | 77 | $0.120 | $0.750 |
| 27 | Llama 4 MaverickMeta | 77 | $0.150 | $0.600 |
| 28 | Grok 3 MinixAI | 76 | $0.300 | $0.500 |
| 29 | Gemini 2.0 Flash LiteGoogle | 76 | $0.075 | $0.300 |
| 30 | GPT-5 NanoOpenAI | 76 | $0.050 | $0.400 |
| 31 | Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507Alibaba | 75 | $0.090 | $0.300 |
| 32 | Gemini 2.0 FlashGoogle | 75 | $0.100 | $0.400 |
| 33 | ERNIE 4.5 VL 28B A3BBaidu | 75 | $0.140 | $0.560 |
| 34 | DeepSeek V3.2DeepSeek | 74 | $0.260 | $0.380 |
| 35 | Qwen3 VL 235B A22B InstructAlibaba | 74 | $0.200 | $0.880 |
| 36 | DeepSeek V3.1 TerminusDeepSeek | 74 | $0.210 | $0.790 |
| 37 | DeepSeek V3.1DeepSeek | 74 | $0.150 | $0.750 |
| 38 | Nemotron 3 SuperNVIDIA | 74 | $0.100 | $0.500 |
| 39 | Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3BNVIDIA | 74 | $0.050 | $0.200 |
| 40 | Ministral 3 14B 2512Mistral AI | 74 | $0.200 | $0.200 |
At $0.50/1M output tokens, generating a 2,000-word blog post (~2,500 tokens) costs about $0.00125 - roughly 1/10th of a penny. You could generate 800 blog posts for $1. For chatbots, even heavy usage stays under a few dollars per month.
Sub-$1 models have improved dramatically. Many score above 70 on our composite index and include advanced features like vision and reasoning. The quality gap between budget and premium models continues to shrink with each generation.
Budget models are ideal for: high-volume batch processing, simple classification tasks, draft generation with human review, prototype development, and any use case where cost per request matters more than peak quality.
Premium models justify their cost for: complex reasoning tasks, customer-facing applications requiring top accuracy, specialized code generation, and scenarios where errors have high downstream costs.
Many sub-$1 models deliver surprising quality. Several score above 70 on our composite index and include advanced features like vision, reasoning, and function calling. They are well-suited for high-volume batch processing, classification tasks, draft generation, and prototype development. The quality gap between budget and premium models continues to shrink with each generation.
At $0.50 per million output tokens, generating a 2,000-word blog post (approximately 2,500 tokens) costs about $0.00125 - roughly one-tenth of a penny. You could generate 800 blog posts for just $1. Even heavy chatbot usage typically stays under a few dollars per month at these price points.
Many budget models include vision (image understanding), function calling (tool use), JSON mode for structured output, and streaming. Some even offer reasoning capabilities. The main trade-off compared to premium models is usually in complex multi-step reasoning, nuanced writing quality, and handling edge cases.