110 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 | DeepSeek V4 ProDeepSeek | 86 | $0.435 | $0.870 |
| 2 | DeepSeek V3.2DeepSeek | 81 | $0.229 | $0.343 |
| 3 | Gemma 4 31BGoogle | 80 | $0.120 | $0.350 |
| 4 | Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite Preview 09-2025Google | 79 | $0.100 | $0.400 |
| 5 | Gemini 2.5 Flash LiteGoogle | 79 | $0.100 | $0.400 |
| 6 | MiniMax M2.5MiniMax | 78 | $0.150 | $0.900 |
| 7 | DeepSeek V4 FlashDeepSeek | 77 | $0.090 | $0.180 |
| 8 | Gemma 2 27BGoogle | 77 | $0.650 | $0.650 |
| 9 | MiMo-V2.5-ProXiaomi | 76 | $0.435 | $0.870 |
| 10 | Gemma 4 26B A4B Google | 73 | $0.060 | $0.330 |
| 11 | MiMo-V2.5Xiaomi | 72 | $0.105 | $0.280 |
| 12 | DeepSeek V3 0324DeepSeek | 71 | $0.200 | $0.770 |
| 13 | GLM 4.5 AirZhipu AI | 70 | $0.130 | $0.850 |
| 14 | DeepSeek V3.2 ExpDeepSeek | 70 | $0.270 | $0.410 |
| 15 | MiniMax M2.1MiniMax | 70 | $0.290 | $0.950 |
| 16 | MiniMax M2.7MiniMax | 69 | $0.240 | $0.960 |
| 17 | DeepSeek V3.1DeepSeek | 69 | $0.210 | $0.790 |
| 18 | Qwen3 VL 235B A22B InstructAlibaba | 69 | $0.200 | $0.880 |
| 19 | DeepSeek V3.1 TerminusDeepSeek | 69 | $0.270 | $0.950 |
| 20 | DeepSeek V3DeepSeek | 69 | $0.200 | $0.800 |
| 21 | GPT-4o-miniOpenAI | 69 | $0.150 | $0.600 |
| 22 | Qwen3.5-FlashAlibaba | 68 | $0.065 | $0.260 |
| 23 | Hy3 previewTencent | 68 | $0.063 | $0.210 |
| 24 | Llama 4 MaverickMeta | 67 | $0.150 | $0.600 |
| 25 | Step 3.5 FlashStepFun | 67 | $0.090 | $0.300 |
| 26 | Llama 3.3 70B InstructMeta | 66 | $0.100 | $0.320 |
| 27 | Qwen3.5-9BAlibaba | 66 | $0.100 | $0.150 |
| 28 | GLM 4.6VZhipu AI | 65 | $0.300 | $0.900 |
| 29 | Qwen3 235B A22B Thinking 2507Alibaba | 65 | $0.100 | $0.100 |
| 30 | Llama 3.1 70B InstructMeta | 65 | $0.400 | $0.400 |
| 31 | Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507Alibaba | 64 | $0.090 | $0.100 |
| 32 | Qwen3 30B A3B Thinking 2507Alibaba | 64 | $0.080 | $0.400 |
| 33 | Qwen3 30B A3BAlibaba | 64 | $0.120 | $0.500 |
| 34 | Qwen3 Next 80B A3B ThinkingAlibaba | 64 | $0.098 | $0.780 |
| 35 | GLM 4.7 FlashZhipu AI | 63 | $0.060 | $0.400 |
| 36 | Trinity Large Thinkingarcee-ai | 63 | $0.250 | $0.800 |
| 37 | Qwen3 8BAlibaba | 61 | $0.050 | $0.400 |
| 38 | Mercury 2Inception | 61 | $0.250 | $0.750 |
| 39 | GPT-4o-mini Search PreviewOpenAI | 60 | $0.150 | $0.600 |
| 40 | Llama 3.3 Nemotron Super 49B V1.5NVIDIA | 60 | $0.400 | $0.400 |
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.