October 2026
Best cheap AI model
The cheapest models that still rate in the top 40% of LMArena's overall board, sorted by price. Good enough for most work at a fraction of a flagship's cost.
| # | Model | Rating | Input / 1M | Output / 1M | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DeepSeek V3.1 TerminusDeepSeek | 1419 | $0.060 | $0.180 | 128K |
| 2 | DeepSeek V4 FlashDeepSeek | 1432 | $0.090 | $0.180 | 1M |
| 3 | MiMo-V2.6-FlashDeepinfra | 1455 | $0.140 | $0.280 | 1M |
| 4 | MiMo-V2.6-FlashNovita | 1455 | $0.140 | $0.280 | 1M |
| 5 | MiMo-V2.5Xiaomi | 1428 | $0.140 | $0.280 | 1M |
| 6 | Qwen 3 235b A22B 2507Qwen | 1419 | $0.090 | $0.550 | 262K |
| 7 | GLM-5.3-FlashZ.ai | 1471 | $0.012 | $0.900 | 1M |
| 8 | DeepSeek V3.2DeepSeek | 1425 | $0.260 | $0.380 | 164K |
| 9 | DeepSeek V4.1 FlashDeepinfra | 1463 | $0.200 | $0.600 | 1M |
| 10 | Qwen3 VL 235B A22B InstructQwen | 1420 | $0.200 | $0.880 | 262K |
| 11 | DeepSeek-V3.1Deepseek Ai | 1420 | $0.250 | $0.950 | 131K |
| 12 | GPT 5.6 LunaOpenAI | 1431 | $0.200 | $1.20 | 1.1M |
Ratings from LMArena, snapshot 2026-10-13, used under its licence with attribution. Prices are what Rapid Router bills per request.
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How this is ranked
Models are first filtered to the top 40% of LMArena's overall board, then sorted by a blended price of 75% input and 25% output per million tokens, the mix of a typical chat or RAG workload.
Only models that are live and paid on Rapid Router are listed; free-tier and preview models are on the catalog. For your own monthly cost on any of them, use the cost calculator.
Common questions
What is the best cheap ai model?
DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus by DeepSeek ranks first on price among models in the top 40% of LMArena's overall board as of October 2026.
How do I use these models?
Every model here is callable at https://rapidrouter.ai/api/v1 with one Rapid Router key and the OpenAI SDK; switching between them is a one-string change. Each model's page has a ready request.
How often does this ranking change?
It is read from the latest LMArena snapshot (2026-10-13) and the live catalog every time the page loads, so new models and new votes show up without anyone editing the page.
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