Budget · Under $1/M
LLMs under $1 per million tokens
Every model priced below $1 per 1M input tokens. Ranked by benchmark score within budget.
Models40
Top quality78.4
Max price$1.00/M
What this page is
This page lists every model with input priced below $1 per million tokens, ranked by benchmark quality. This is the volume tier · most production traffic for chat, classification, extraction, and bulk content runs on sub-$1 models. The quality variance within this budget is huge, so the ranking matters.
Ranked by quality within budget
Input under $1/M, highest benchmark score first.
| # | Model | In $/1M | Out $/1M | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $0.39 | $2.45 | OSS | |
| 2 | $0.40 | $1.20 | OSS | |
| 3 | $0.10 | $0.30 | OSS | |
| 4 | $0.43 | $0.87 | OSS | |
| 5 | $0.09 | $0.29 | OSS | |
| 6 | $0.30 | $1.20 | OSS | |
| 7 | $0.60 | $6.00 | Closed | |
| 8 | $0.26 | $1.02 | OSS | |
| 9 | $0.60 | $2.20 | OSS | |
| 10 | $0.00 | $0.00 | OSS | |
| 11 | $0.03 | $0.14 | OSS | |
| 12 | $0.08 | $0.17 | OSS | |
| 13 | $0.00 | $0.00 | OSS | |
| 14 | $0.13 | $1.56 | OSS | |
| 15 | $0.28 | $2.40 | OSS | |
| 16 | $0.30 | $0.50 | Closed | |
| 17 | $0.07 | $0.30 | Closed | |
| 18 | $0.24 | $0.96 | OSS | |
| 19 | $0.61 | $3.07 | OSS | |
| 20 | $0.12 | $0.35 | OSS | |
| 21 | $0.10 | $0.78 | OSS | |
| 22 | $0.25 | $2.00 | Closed | |
| 23 | $0.33 | $1.95 | OSS | |
| 24 | $0.97 | $3.04 | OSS | |
| 25 | $0.20 | $0.80 | OSS | |
| 26 | $0.10 | $0.40 | Closed | |
| 27 | $0.20 | $0.80 | OSS | |
| 28 | $0.78 | $3.90 | OSS | |
| 29 | $0.08 | $0.28 | OSS | |
| 30 | $0.50 | $2.15 | OSS | |
| 31 | $0.54 | $0.54 | OSS | |
| 32 | $0.07 | $0.28 | OSS | |
| 33 | $0.12 | $0.46 | OSS | |
| 34 | $0.46 | $1.82 | OSS | |
| 35 | $0.57 | $2.30 | OSS | |
| 36 | $0.60 | $1.92 | OSS | |
| 37 | $0.15 | $1.50 | OSS | |
| 38 | $0.35 | $0.56 | OSS | |
| 39 | $0.05 | $0.19 | OSS | |
| 40 | $0.24 | $0.90 | OSS |
Top 3 best-quality sub-$1 models
Best quality under $1
Qwen3.5 397B A17B
input
$0.39/M
output
$2.45/M
Qwen3.5 397B A17B is the highest-scoring model with input priced below $1/M. Excellent for bulk, high-volume workloads.
Runner up
DeepSeek V3.2 Speciale
input
$0.40/M
output
$1.20/M
DeepSeek V3.2 Speciale is the highest-scoring model with input priced below $1/M. Excellent for bulk, high-volume workloads.
Third
Step 3.5 Flash
input
$0.10/M
output
$0.30/M
Step 3.5 Flash is the highest-scoring model with input priced below $1/M. Excellent for bulk, high-volume workloads.
The price gap · cheapest vs most expensive
Cheapest
Qwen3.5 397B A17B
$0.39/M
$ per 1M input tokens
Why the gap
At the sub-$1 tier, the "most expensive" is still cheap. The tradeoff is raw benchmark quality vs provider reliability. Open-source models dominate the cheap end.
Most expensive
GLM 5.1
$0.97/M
$ per 1M input tokens
Frequently asked questions
Most open-source models (DeepSeek V3, Qwen3.5, GLM-4.6, Llama 3.3) plus small proprietary models (Gemini Flash, GPT-4o-mini, Claude Haiku) on various providers. The cheap end clusters around $0.05 to $0.30 per million.